Washington, Dec 12 (DPA) Thirty-five years after the last man stood on the moon, the US space agency remains focused on returning humans to Earth’s satellite as a launching pad for future exploration of Mars.
Never mind that the US public seemed more fixated on the high-profile arrest earlier this year of an astronaut caught in a jealous love triangle with a colleague, or that the long-delayed installation of a European module on the International Space Station (ISS) was again pushed back with the postponement of the Atlantis shuttle launch Sunday.
NASA administrators have their eyes fixed further in the future and are at work developing plans for the next generation of spacecraft after the retirement of the ageing shuttle set for 2010.
Within the next year, NASA aims to send an unmanned orbiter around the moon to look for sites for future settlement and to complete preliminary design reviews for Orion, the next-generation spacecraft to replace the shuttle and take humans back to the moon.
Capsule design is the first step in a vision outlined in 2004 by President George W. Bush to put up to four astronauts back on the moon by 2020 – five decades after the first moonwalk on July 20, 1969, when the idea of spaceflight and humans on the moon captured the American imagination.
The big issue right now, NASA said Monday, is deciding whether Orion should bounce back down to the home planet to land on water or solid hard ground.
Unlike the shuttle, which looks like and lands like a traditional airplane, Orion will return to a design more like the original conventional-capsule Apollo design that took the first humans to the moon.
Right now, NASA is leaning to the water-landing option as less risky, officials told reporters. The Apollo craft also landed in the ocean.
In order to put down on land, NASA would need a well-honed navigation system because the consequences would be severe for mistakes, said Jeff Hanley, programme manager for the Constellation programme.
Landing short would be like “landing in the mountains or landing in San Francisco “, Hanley noted.
Ideally, NASA would like to be able to put Orion down on land in an emergency situation, but that would require building a spacecraft robust enough for the harder impact without substantially increasing the weight and cost of production.
Rick Gilbrech, associate administrator on NASA’s exploration team, said 2008 efforts aim to show the next US president, who will take office in January 2009, that the agency is “on a stable course” and is “on track to get back to the moon”.
Bush’s plans have drawn criticism in the scientific community from some who believe it’s misguided to spend so much money – the price tag on his proposal is $230 billion – going back to a place the space programme has already been.
With presidential elections in November 2008, that sentiment has been echoed by at least one presidential candidate.
Barack Obama, a hopeful for the Democratic presidential nomination, has said he would divert money from the space programme, focussing instead on domestic spending priorities, such as education.
NASA officials Monday stressed their belief that the lunar and Mars programme will inspire young Americans to think beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Even though progress may seem slow, the space programme continues to build on past advances.
“The ISS is our Mercury. The lunar outpost is our Gemini”, Hanley said, looking forward to human flights to Mars and referring to the space programmes that preceded the Apollo flights to the moon in the 1960s and 70s.