The next
astronauts to work on the moon will likely live in larger habitats and drive
sporty new rovers capable of two-week treks, NASA officials said Thursday.
Rather than
assembling a lunar outpost over time from a multitude of small, separately
launched modules, NASA is now hoping to land up to three large habitats on
fewer flights to build a beachhead on the moon, the space agency said.
Doug Cooke,
NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, said that the
space agency's revised lunar plan calls for the launching of larger habitats to
the moon on unmanned cargo flights. That way, the first new lunar astronauts could
begin to reap science rewards faster than if they had to haul smaller habitat sections
and hardware to the moon on each flight, then combine them into a larger base to
support long-duration expeditions.
"We
want to get scientific return. We want to get information that will help,
potentially, space commerce and we want to get international participation early,"
Cooke told reporters in a teleconference. "All of these objectives we want
to address as early in the flights as we possibly can by getting the outpost up
and running quickly."
Cooke and
other NASA officials detailed the agency's revised lunar plan at the Space 2007
Conference of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in
Long Beach, California. NASA aims to return astronauts to the
moon by 2020 using its space shuttle successor -- the Orion
Crew Exploration Vehicle and the Ares I booster -- as well as the Ares V
heavy-lift rocket.
"There
is some great science to do on the moon," said Laurie Leshin, director of
sciences and exploration NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, adding that future
astronauts will help better understand the moon's environment and interior.
NASA has
eyed the moon's Shackleton Crater near the lunar south pole as a possible moon
base site because of its proximity to permanently lit and shadowed regions that
could be key for solar power stations and the hunt for water ice. But Cooke
said that Shackleton is not the only candidate for a moon base, especially
since the revised plan calls for mobile habitat modules that could move between
science targets or gather together in a sort of lunar spare parts depot.
Data from
NASA's unmanned Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter, set to launch next year, and other international probes
will help pin down future landing sites, Cooke added.
Lunar
hot rod
Once
astronauts return to the moon, NASA does not expect them to simply stand around
their landing craft collecting nearby rocks.
Astronaut
Mike Gernhardt, NASA's lead for extravehicular physiology systems and
performance projects, said the agency is now planning to send a pair of pressurized
rovers that will allow spaceflyers to explore more of the lunar surface while
retaining the relative comfort of a shirt-sleeve environment.
"They're
basically habitats on wheels," Gernhardt said, adding that the new vehicles
would be about the same size as the unpressurized
rovers driven by astronauts during NASA's Apollo moon landings. "If
you can picture this thing, it's kind of a combination between a spacesuit and
a sports car."
Both rovers
would be deployed together, each with a crew of two astronauts. If one rover
failed, all four spaceflyers could pile into the remaining vehicle to return to
their lunar base, Gernhardt said. Current plans call for a 5,000-pound (2,267-kilogram)
pressurized vehicle with seats that fold into beds for longer trips.
The two-person
rovers would be equipped to handle three-day, seven-day and two-week excursions
on the moon with exterior-mounted spacesuits that could be donned by climbing
through a shared hatchway, Gernhardt said. It could take just 10 minutes to
step into the spacesuits and onto the lunar surface, he added.
Short
jaunts could cover about 25 miles (40 kilometers) with the two-week trips
roving across 596 miles (960 kilometers) across the lunar surface, he added.
As to how
much the rovers may cost, Gernhardt could only offer an estimate.
"I
will only say that it will be more than a Ferrari," he said.
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