Manned trips to moon in near future
Baku, May 18 (AZERTAC). The moon hasn`t had any visitors since 1972, but that seems likely to change in the next 10 to 20 years. In the year 2004, an awful lot of people had their eye on the moon, and it wasn`t just the United States anymore with designs on putting a few extra footprints in the lunar dust up there.
To be certain, there has been renewed U.S. interest lately in a return trip to the moon, too, but several Asian countries have decided that they want to get in on the act, and that`s what makes this new-millenium space exploration so much different than what we saw in the 20th century.
Japan, for example, was set to launch a lunar probe project in summer 2004, but had to delay those plans because some of its parts were recalled by their U.S. manufacturer. That mission, dubbed Lunar-A, was originally rescheduled for this year (2005) but will now likely not take place until 2006.
In addition, a larger-scale Japanese lunar exploration project named SELENE was moved from 2005 until 2006 while officials investigated why an H-2A rocket carrying two Japanese satellites veered off course in November 2004 (the H-2A is the same type of rocket needed for the lunar mission). As of early 2005, that mission had been delayed again (partly because of Lunar-A delays), and was expected to take place by 2008. Among SELENE`s missions is one to obtain data that will help determine ways to utilize the moon`s resources.
In 2004, China was making a great deal of noise around plans to send humans to the moon by 2020, after sending unmanned lunar probes by 2010. Partly, this exuberance seems to have be caused by China`s successful manned orbit of the earth in 2003, an event that made the country part of the very small club of nations that have sent humans into space at all. By late 2004 or early 2005, though, China was stepping back from the goal of a manned mission to the moon, saying that such a mission would be too costly. Instead, the world`s most populous nation is planning to build its own manned space station by 2020 (give or take) and send a probe to the moon in the near future.
For its part, India also was talking about walking on lunar soil, drafting plans to put astronauts on the moon, with a goal of doing so by 2015. But in 2004, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), like China, began to rethink plans for a manned mission to the moon.
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