Word: moone
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...bound for deep space again. In a rare double hit of good-news headlines last week, NASA announced first that it has firmed up its plans for America's return to the moon and then, two days later, that it had discovered signs that water had flowed on the surface of Mars within the past seven years. Where there is water, of course, there could be life...
...space watchers, these are game changers. In the three years since President George W. Bush announced his plan to send Americans back to the moon and on to Mars, questions have persisted about whether NASA has the institutional wherewithal to pull off so grand a plan and whether there's enough scientific rationale to even try. But now there's reason for optimism on both fronts...
...first encouraging sign that NASA means business is the sensible hardware it's envisioning for the lunar portion of the moon-Mars program. The new vehicles are based on proven--if souped up--Apollo technology, with an orbiter that looks a lot like the old Apollo command module and a lander that resembles the familiar spindly lunar module. The new lander could carry three or more crew members down to the surface and drive them around the lunar landscape, doubling as a sort of extraterrestrial pickup truck. Crews would live for up to 180 days at a time in trailer...
...site for the moon settlement is uncertain, but the best candidate is near Shackleton Crater at the south lunar pole. Parts of the region are bathed in sunlight more than 70% of the time, just the thing for the outpost's solar panels. What's more, ridges and hills cast patches of ground in equally deep shadow, meaning a possible supply of ice that could be used for drinking water and hydrogen and oxygen fuel...
Astronauts who set up camp at the site would have a lot to keep them busy. NASA is exploring 180 areas of scientific research and other projects for its moon crews, from the lofty (solar physics) to the frankly commercial (installing lunar robots that could be driven remotely from Earth by paying customers to help defray costs...