纳萨的姑娘小伙子们干得不赖，他们宣布了月球基地计划。
NASA announces lunar base plan
Dec. 4, 2006
Courtesy NASA
and World Science staff
NASA an­nounced plans today to build a per­ma­nent base on the moon by 2024.
“With such an out­post, NASA can learn to use the moon’s nat­u­ral re­sources to live off the land, make prepa­ra­tions for a jour­ney to Mars, con­duct a wide range of sci­en­tif­ic in­ves­ti­ga­tions and en­cour­age in­ter­na­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion,” the agen­cy said in a state­ment.
Artist's concept of a lunar base. (Courtesy NASA)
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The agen­cy an­nounced the plan as it un­veiled el­e­ments of an in­ter­na­tion­al proj­ect to re­turn hu­mans to the moon, known as the Glob­al Ex­plo­ra­tion Strat­e­gy.
“This strat­e­gy will en­a­ble in­terested na­tions to lev­er­age their ca­pa­bil­i­ties and fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions,” said NASA Dep­u­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tor Shana Dale, who is guid­ing the ef­fort among 14 space agen­cies.
NASA be­gan de­vel­op­ing the strat­e­gy last April in or­der to meet a con­gres­sion­al man­date, as well as to ac­com­plish goals out­lined in its stra­te­gic plan.
The strat­e­gy is evolv­ing from a di­a­logue among more than 1,000 ex­perts, in­clud­ing space agen­cy per­son­nel, non-governmental or­ga­ni­za­tions and com­mer­cial in­terests, ac­cord­ing to NASA of­fi­cials.
NASA plan­ners used the in­ter­na­tion­al group’s de­lib­er­a­tions as well as in­put from ac­a­dem­ia, pri­vate sec­tor and pri­vate cit­i­zens as the ba­sis for sketch­ing a U.S. blue­print for a re­turn to the moon.
This “has re­sulted in an un­der­stand­ing of what is re­quired to im­ple­ment and en­a­ble crit­i­cal ex­plo­ra­tion ob­jec­tives,” said Doug Cooke, dep­u­ty as­so­ci­ate ad­min­is­tra­tor of NASA’s Ex­plo­ra­tion Sys­tems Di­rec­to­rate.
“This is all im­por­tant as we con­tin­ue the pro­cess we have be­gun and bet­ter de­fine the ar­chi­tec­ture and our var­i­ous ex­plo­ra­tion roles in what is a very ex­cit­ing fu­ture for the Unit­ed States and the world.”
As cur­rent­ly en­vi­sioned, an in­cre­men­tal build­up of the base would beg­in with four-person crews mak­ing sev­er­al seven-day vis­its to the moon un­til their pow­er sup­plies, rovers and liv­ing quar­ters are op­er­a­tional, Cooke said. The first mis­sion would beg­in by 2020, to be fol­lowed by 180-day mis­sions to pre­pare for jour­neys to Mars.
The pro­posed “lu­nar ar­chi­tec­ture” calls for robotic pre­cur­sor mis­sions de­signed to sup­port the hu­man mis­sion, he added. Both the Glob­al Ex­plo­ra­tion Strat­e­gy and the moon base will be dis­cussed at a Space Ex­plo­ra­tion Con­fer­ence to be held this week at the George R. Brown Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Hous­ton.
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