NASA's new road map for manned space exploration talks about a forecast to land four astronauts on the moon by 2018 as the first step towards a six-man journey to Mars.
NASA's new road map for manned space exploration talks about a forecast to land four astronauts on the moon by 2018 as the first step towards a six-man journey to Mars.
The pioneers will build a lunar outpost, most likely at the South Pole, which will include living areas, power stations and communication systems. Expeditions will explore the desolate area in search of valuable supplies such as fuel and water. Astronauts will plow the terrain in high-tech "space beetles" in search of answers to scientific puzzles that fascinate researchers. The crews will take off in rockets that will inherit the space shuttle and fall back to Earth in capsules similar to those used in the Apollo program.
The assault on the moon will lead to a 500-day journey to Mars, an alien world more than 55 million km from us, which some scientists suspect may contain evidence of life from outer space.
These are just examples of NASA's ambitious plans for a new era of human presence in space, and they outline the architecture of the agency's research systems in a set of internal schematic drawings. A copy of these summaries, some of which are expected to be published next month, was disclosed by the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
The study is the first detailed description of the way in which NASA intends to achieve the goals announced by President Bush in January 2004 about returning astronauts to the moon by 2020 in preparation for missions to Mars. The study estimates that the program will cost approximately 217 billion dollars by the end of 2025. NASA's research office is expected to receive this amount of money by the time in question. NASA managers refused to be interviewed about the program until its official release.
According to the study, engineers decided to develop a rocket that could lift much heavier loads than the shuttle. The hardware and cargo required for lunar missions will be housed in a 40-story tall container that will be built around the shuttle's external fuel cell. This unmanned vehicle will be developed between 2010 and 2018. The planned price of such a launch is 540 million dollars - equivalent to the cost of a shuttle flight.
Starting in June 2011, astronauts will take off to the space station using an advanced version that will be placed on top of a fuel tank like that of the shuttle. These missions, which cost 280 million dollars per mission, will free NASA from exclusive dependence on the Russians for flights to the space station after the shuttle retires. The same rocket will be used in the future to put crews into orbit around the Earth as a first step towards trips to the moon. NASA estimates that the launcher will be nine times safer than the shuttle.
New spacecraft design
New spacecraft are planned to take off on new rockets. Engineers are already developing a cone-shaped Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to carry three-person crews to the space station. Future, larger versions of the capsule will take four people to the Moon and six-person crews to Mars.
Last month, NASA awarded parallel contracts worth $28 million each to Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman-Boeing group to begin preliminary designs for the new spacecraft. The goal set by NASA managers is for the spacecraft to be ready for a manned launch to the space station in 2011. Getting the CEV ready as soon as possible could be fatal if the White House decides to advance the shuttle's retirement date (currently in 2010) due to the foam fallout problems and other hazards that occurred during The Discovery is on July 26, Tuesday.
In addition to the CEV, engineers began preliminary designs for a lander that would carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back. The development of the program will be accelerated in 2010, and the spacecraft will be ready for flight in 2018. The lander will remain on the lunar surface for about a week. An airtight chamber would allow a crew of four astronauts, twice as many as on the Apollo missions, to leave the spacecraft for moonwalks. Current plans call for a minimum of two lunar missions per year, beginning in 2018. Astronauts will conduct long-term research on the moon. Some of the studies will measure how the human body reacts over time to weakened gravity, increased solar radiation and other conditions outside of Earth.
The moon is like that - a launch to Mars
One of NASA's main reasons for returning astronauts to the Moon to live there is to specialize in technologies and gain the experience needed for future human journeys to Mars. Detailed development of these journeys is expected to begin around 2020, but the clear outlines are already beginning to take shape.
The four or five lifts of the heavy launchers will put the spacecraft and its equipment into orbit. Meanwhile, by the time the crew takes off, another large unmanned spacecraft will arrive before them on Mars, carrying a living area, power, communications and a ship that will take them back to Earth. The journey of the astronauts will last six months in each direction. On Mars, the crew will spend five hundred days exploring large areas of the surface and in other scientific studies.
However, political challenges to KDA pose a different kind of threat to the future of the program. The cost of the program has already sparked debate.
The estimated price of 217 billion dollars for research is XNUMX billion dollars higher than the planned budget for NASA's Office of Research for the next twenty years.
The space agency's total budget is expected to reach $17 billion in 2006. If NASA budgets only $20 billion in annual spending over the next 20 years, it will receive a total of $400 billion. The estimated cost of $217 billion for exploration by 2025 represents 54 percent of this total. NASA already spends about half of its budget on manned space exploration programs.
The challenge will be to keep the projects on schedule and within budget. The program also must survive three presidential elections and five new congresses before astronauts can walk on the moon again.
