[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – As NASA works to develop a plan for an accelerated return of humans to the moon, a senior White House official stressed the need for long-term sustainability, which would require both lunar base and a footbridge.
Scott Pace, executive secretary of the National Council of Space, said at an event organized in the National Academies on April 23 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Universities Space Research Association, that the new initiative to create a lunar human landing is a "strategy of speed". leading to sustainability "that will make this effort different from the Apollo missions of half a century ago.
Pace, speaking four weeks after Vice President Mike Pence announced a new human lunar landing goal in the next five years, said the accelerated schedule was meant to give a sense of urgency to the focus of the agency on this goal. "The purpose of this speed, which partly explains why the Vice President made this announcement, was to provide focus and priority," he said.
"If you have a very distant goal, it's very tempting to analyze a multitude of different options and postpone making difficult decision-making priorities." It's clear that you need to set a stressful goal to what is really important. "This goal, he said, can help create a" space organization that can travel beyond 39, low earth orbit ".
Related: Can NASA really put astronauts on the Moon in 2024?
NASA has not yet explained in detail how it will achieve this new goal nor the budget required. An amendment to the 2020 financial year of the agency is being drafted and could be forwarded to Congress as early as next week.
NASA's director, Jim Bridenstine, said what he described as a two-phase approach to the new exploration plan focusing on speed first, followed by sustainability. This approach would involve the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft, undeveloped lunar landers, and a lunar gateway that, at least initially, would concern only a fraction of the previously proposed elements for the Moon. monitored installation by the man. orbit.
Pace confirmed in his presentation that the lunar gateway would be relatively small in its initial version. "I would expect to see a very minimal gateway initially, in terms of supporting what we need for 2024. I see a larger and more efficient gateway as we move towards reuse."
He added that the value of the entrance door could ultimately be a "fuel depot", thus allowing lunar landers, or at least parts of them, to be re-used. "Instead of abandoning expensive vehicles after a single trip, we should consider creating a fuel depot to allow repeat visits to the moon and pave the way for Mars," he said. "And that's exactly what NASA has proposed with the Lunar Gateway."
A "minimal" gateway has raised concerns among international partners about the roles they would play, if any, in this initial sprint to the moon. When asked about this, Pace said that he had met with international partners on the subject. "In the short term, the goal is to create an organization that can go back," he said. As the focus shifts to long-term sustainability, he said, it will be possible for partners to provide Gateway modules and lunar relays.
This focus on sustainability extends to the lunar surface. "We need a lunar field station to explore the lunar surface and activate multiple sites from this station," he said. This motivated the decision to make the south pole of the moon the site of this first lunar landing, which Pace plans to build over time, and which will eventually include multiple modules including pressure rovers and nuclear fission reactors. . "A lunar station of the South Pole can be a point of access to the rest of the lunar surface."
One of the key factors for this interest in the South Pole is the potential access to water ice deposits that can be used for life support and as a propellant. He warned however that the nature and accessibility of this ice are uncertain and that it is necessary to conduct research to determine if it is possible to use the existing ice.
The base can also support other research there. "We are going to go for many reasons, science is one of them," he said, "but we want to make sure that the science we do there is actually based on community assessments." . "
The focus on lunar resources prompted the public to wonder why NASA had canceled last year Resource Prospector, an agency mission being developed to test the feasibility of ice extraction. at the water.
Pace said its cancellation was a "mis-communicated" decision by NASA. The agency's management, he said, understands the value of robotic precursor missions to help understand the nature and accessibility of ice-water at the poles, which can also support an "opportunistic science" that may not have been achieved otherwise.
This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to cover all aspects of the space industry.
[ad_2]
Source link