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NASA on target for return
to the moon by 2020: officials
AFP
Tuesday December 11, 2007
Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to
return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to
serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday.
"Our job is to build towns on the moon and
eventually put tire prints on Mars," NASA's Rick Gilbrech
told reporters here, one year after the US space agency unveiled
an ambitious plan to site a solar-powered, manned outpost on the
south pole of the moon.
"We have the International Space Station; we're going to
have a lunar outpost, and someday, certainly, somebody will go
to Mars," said Jeff Hanley, head of NASA's Constellation
program, which is developing the tools to return humans to the
moon.
"Thirty-five years ago this week, Gene Cernan, Ron Evans
and Jack Schmitt were on the surface of the moon. We are working
hard to return a future generation of astronauts to the moon,"
said space flight veteran Carl Walz, who now works for NASA's
exploration systems mission directorate.
(Article continues below)
Despite budgetary constraints, NASA hoped to have Constellation
fully operational by 2016, Gilbrech said.
"We're hoping we get a budget passed by Congress,"
he said, pointing out that only six-tenths of a penny of every
tax dollar went to funding NASA's space programs.
Full
article here.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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