NASA: U.S. will return to moon by late 2020s

Agency to begin working on a lunar mini space station

A NASA official said this week that the space agency expects to leave footprints on the moon again in the late 2020s, nearly 60 years after we last touched the surface.

That may seem like a long time away, but Steven Clarke, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration, said Tuesday the plan is to have science and human exploration work together, with an eye on a future mission to Mars. Clarke presented the agency’s plans for lunar missions during a meeting of the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science, which is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Space Studies Board. The meeting was held in California.

“We want to build on our extensive past experience,” Clarke said. The United States’ last trip to the moon was in December 1972 with Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt.

Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has pushed for the U.S. to return to the moon as a steppingstone toward Mars.

On the human side of things, Trump’s $19.9 billion proposed budget for the next fiscal year tasks NASA with launching an uncrewed Orion flight by 2021, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023. It also would set aside $504.2 million in the coming year to begin working on the foundation on a $2.7 billion Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway — basically a mini space station orbiting the moon where astronauts could live and work.

Clarke said the gateway should be fully functional by 2026. Human missions to the lunar surface are expected to come soon after.

But NASA’s lunar exploration plan also includes robotic missions. Though the agency earlier this year abruptly canceled a lunar rover that was just a few years away from launching to the moon in search of water, it has asked commercial companies to submit their plans for new robotic missions.

NASA will select companies in December, Clarke said, and he expects those missions will begin in 2019 or 2020.

“We’re looking at how this feeds forward to a Mars exploration mission — not just a robotic mission, but human exploration as well,” Clarke told the committee.

NASA NASA is once again setting its sights on the moon. In a meeting Tuesday, an official detailed plans to put American astronauts on lunar soil by the late 2020s.