Space plan may put Canadians on moon
Ambitious roadmap charts eventual trip to Mars after 2030
MONTREAL Canada could be sending its first astronaut to the moon under an ambitious long-term plan being developed by a group of space agencies around the world.
A return to the moon within the next two decades is part of the recently updated Global Exploration Roadmap — a far-reaching plan developed by more than a dozen space agencies.
Canada is among the 14 space agencies participating in the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, which first started developing the strategy in 2007.
An early phase of the plan would put a new space station into orbit around the moon, and use it as a staging point to ferry astronauts back and forth.
It’s part of a roadmap that lays out human and robotic missions in the solar system over the next 25 years, with the other components including a moon settlement and a proposal by NASA to capture a near-Earth asteroid.
Jean-Claude Piedboeuf, the director of space-exploration development at the Canadian Space Agency, says there’s an agreement among space agencies that returning to the moon is a stepping stone to a more distant target: Mars.
There would be human missions in the lunar vicinity and on its surface until 2030, at which point sights would be set on the red planet.
The CSA official suggested astronauts could again be moon-bound in about 15 years. There could well be Canadian visitors. Their specialty: robotics. “We’re proposing a vision where Canada could have an astronaut, effectively a Canadian who will be in lunar space, either in orbit or on the moon and could operate a Canadian rover in the same way that Canadians operate a Canadarm on the space station,” Piedboeuf said.
“We can foresee in the future doing the same type of thing on the moon, with the Canadian industry building a rover — and a Canadian astronaut could be the operator of this rover.”
Canada is working to get one of its two active astronauts, David Saint-Jacques or Jeremy Hansen, to visit the International Space Station between 2016 and 2019.