NASA opens deep space missions office for manned spaceflight
Baku, August 16 (AZERTAC), NASA has created a new department to oversee the future manned spaceflight missions. Called the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate, the department will, according to a news release from NASA headquarters in Washington, direct missions concerning the International Space Station and direct human exploration of space further out into the Solar System beyond low Earth orbit.
The creation of the directorate is the result of efforts at NASA to ready itself for the future while making itself more efficient in the process. The HEO Mission Directorate will combine the personnel and resources of the Space Operations and Exploration Systems mission directorates into one operational entity.
The Obama administration announced in early 2010 that its revamping of NASA not only included development of private commercial efforts with regard to space exploration but also a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s. The overall plan would see an American on the moon again
With the cancellation of the Constellation manned spaceflight (which was designed to put a man on the moon once more before 2020) and space shuttle programs, the U. S. has entered a phase of space exploration where it will have no operational missions involving a manned spacecraft in the next decade. Although the U. S. will continue to operate the International Space Station, American astronauts will hitch rides aboard Russian rockets to get there.
Even with budgetary problems, the U. S. might still get to the moon again before any other nation. Japan has proposed actually constructing a moon base by 2030, after putting astronauts on the moon by 2020. India also has designs on a manned moon landing by 2020. But with the world`s economic woes, delays could force the moon missions further back into the decade.
Advances in technology and the increase in investment in the commercial aspects of space exploration could see private companies perhaps developing not only rockets but spacecraft to travel to the moon even before government operations.
Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier, who previously was associate administrator for the Space Operations Directorate, will head the new organization.
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