It seems that everyone is talking about the Moon these days — not just how to get there, but what to do once landed there! NASA is planning to reach the moon and set up base, including a pair of small and pressurized rovers with range of nearly 600 miles.
NASA officials states the kind of equipment, living facilities and vehicles astronauts that would be used for an extended lunar mission, planned for the year 2020.
The agency has proposed the first proposal on last December for a polar lunar base, which is powered by near constant sunlight on solar panels.
The new rover will not be as much longer as the buggies the Apollo astronauts drove but the idea is to pressurize rovers, so that astronauts could drive in their sleeves shirts rather than requiring full suits. This will support missions across the lunar surface of up to two weeks.
Doug Cooke, the NASA official leading the lunar study group, stated that earlier proposals will carry stage-wise habitation modules to the moon, which might be supplanted by a proposal to heave a single large module to the moon on an unnamed cargo ship.
Image: PNT
