ESA Joins the Moon-Train, Leaving Mars Behind
NASA has its eyes set on Mars-at least until some new Presidential administration changes its direction. But around the world, it seems everybody else is aiming for the Moon instead. The latest? The European Space Agency, a longtime NASA ally, just released a short plea with an eye toward our nearest neighbor in the cosmos.
ESA's plan calls for human habitation in lunar orbit, where astronauts would control robots on the lunar surface below. "Lunar rovers, telerobotics, and hybrid surface power are some of the innovative approaches that are being developed to support these early missions," the post says. "The vision is truly international. Space agencies, the private sector, and industry are working towards a common of open lunar exploration." The agency sees this mission as a next step after the International Space Station.
While NASA's current policy takes a "been there, done that" approach to the moon, it's not as though the American space agency isn't thinking about lunar missions at all. Some Orion tests call for lunar orbital missions to pave the way toward Mars. In addition, the Asteroid Redirect Mission calls for astronauts to place a captured asteroid fragment into lunar orbit, effectively creating a subsatellite of the Earth. However, NASA is not part of a proposed "moon village" involving Russian, European, and private sector partners for a moon base in the 2030s.
As Space News points out, though, there's a serious hurdle ESA faces: a lukewarm, or nonexistent, response from the individual countries who makes up ESA as a consortium. This popular indifference has tied up previous efforts to get European countries to the Moon. Those countries, at least robotic-exploration wise, are focused on ESA's upcoming ExoMars mission, a two-pronged collaboration with the Russian space agency (now the Roscosmos corporation) to find signs of life on Mars.
The Space News article also points out that it's common for the director-general of ESA to project non-binding ideas, meaning sometimes he or she tosses out ambitious proposals that the organization is never going to realize. But Johann-Dietrich Werner, the current boss, has been adamant in recent months about a return to the moon. It would require the agency or its partners to come up with a heavy lift rocket capable of getting there, but ESA has already been working on the robotic component on a moon mission with the adorable Interact Centaur.
Source: ArsTechnica
