Back to the moon.Someday, you might be able to live on the moon. In 2020, NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. plans to begin building a base on the moon, the space agency announced last week. The project should be finished by 2024. If you're 10 years old today, you'll be 28 then. So, if you train to be an astronaut, you could be one of the first to visit the lunar outpost. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon in 1969. At the time, he called it "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Space exploration has continued, but no one has set foot on the moon since 1972. For the new project, NASA talked with more than 1,000 scientists and engineers to come up with a plan. The agency decided to build a single base instead of developing several landing sites. At first, astronauts would spend a week at a time on the moon. Eventually, stays would last for 6 months, maybe longer. Once there, astronauts would drive around in a rover with pressurized pres·sur·ize tr.v. pres·sur·ized, pres·sur·iz·ing, pres·sur·iz·es 1. To maintain normal air pressure in (an enclosure, as an aircraft or submarine). 2. air so that they could breathe without wearing spacesuits all the time. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NASA hasn't yet decided where on the moon to put the base, and the agency may not make a final decision until 2013. This decision will depend on data collected by several robotic scouting missions. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter This article or section documents a scheduled or expected spaceflight. Details may change as the launch date approaches or more information becomes available. , for one, will go to the moon in 2008. A lander will arrive in 2010. People will finally return to the moon in 2014, when a new rocket called Aries 1 will carry four people in a new type of space shuttle space shuttle, reusable U.S. space vehicle. Developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), it consists of a winged orbiter, two solid-rocket boosters, and an external tank. . NASA plans to retire the current fleet of shuttles by 2010. In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified" meantime, meanwhile , the space agency is eyeing an area called the Shackleton crater, near the moon's south pole South Pole, southern end of the earth's axis, lat. 90° S. It is distinguished from the south magnetic pole. The South Pole was reached by Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer, in 1911. See Antarctica. , as a good spot to settle. The area gets sunlight 75 to 80 percent of the time, so the base could run on solar power. Nearby is a dark region that might contain water ice and other resources that could fuel operations. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The lunar complex could eventually become a training site and launching base for future missions to Mars, scientists say. The moon would also be a great place to set up radio telescopes This is a list of radio telescopes that are or have been used for radio astronomy. It includes both single dishes and interferometer arrays. They are listed by region, then by name; unnamed telescopes are in reverse size order at the end of the lists. and huge, specially constructed visible-light telescopes with liquid mirrors, far from Earth's many distractions.--E. Sohn |
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