NASA engineers are testing out a giant, six-legged robot that could pick up and move a future Moon base thousands of kilometers across the lunar surface, allowing astronauts to explore much more than just the area around their landing site.
China launched its first lunar probe Wednesday. Japan sent an orbiter up last month. India is close behind. It's an economic competition with military undertones.
A new race to the moon is getting underway, with China, Russia, Japan, India, and the U.S. all developing programs to exploit the moon for national prestige or its vast mineral and energy resources.
Spacecraft could one day be propelled by ion beams shooting up from the Moon, according to a recent concept study.
Mining the moon for fuel used in nuclear fusion reactors is among NASA's 200-plus set of mission goals and could precipitate another reason for other countries and private investors to join future lunar exploration.
NASA's planned moon base announced last week could pave the way for deeper space exploration to Mars, but one of the biggest beneficiaries may be the terrestrial energy industry. Nestled among the agency's 200-point mission goals is a proposal to mine the moon for fuel, helium-3, used in fusion reactors -- futuristic power plants that have been demonstrated in proof-of-concept but are likely decades away from commercial deployment.
NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon.
A growing body of financiers, lawyers and space enthusiasts believe that the recognition of personal property rights 'out there' is the only realistic way to finance the new frontier of commercially driven space exploration.
An unprecedented salvo of international probes will soon shoot for the Moon, all equipped to signal that a new era of lunar exploration has begun. If schedules hold, spacecraft from India, China and Japan will be moonbound before NASA's own Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter swings into action in 2008. Already on duty, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 is wrapping up its survey work.
India, China, Japan and Europe are busy launching, or planning to launch, robotic spaceships to the moon and points beyond. Their goals will include tasks ranging from mapping minerals to seeking ice from which future astronauts might extract drinking water. More distant goals include looking for a mineral called ilmenite that some experts think is rich in an isotope called helium-3.