[ad_1]
NASA on Monday unveiled its latest plan to return astronauts to the Moon in 2024, estimating the cost of meeting that deadline at $ 28 billion (roughly Rs. 2,05,787 crore), $ 16 billion ( approximately Rs. 1,17,592 crore) of which would be spent on the lunar lander.
Congress, which faces an election on November 3, will have to approve funding for a project that has been established by President Donald Trump as a top priority. The $ 28 billion (roughly Rs. 2,05,787 crore) would cover the budget years 2021-25.
In a conference call with reporters Monday about the Artemis mission to return humans to the Moon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine noted that “political risks” were often the biggest threat to NASA’s work, especially before such a crucial choice.
Barack Obama canceled plans for a manned mission to Mars, after his predecessor spent billions of dollars on the project.
If Congress approves the first installment of $ 3.2 billion (roughly Rs 23,515 million) by Christmas, “we are still on track for a moon landing in 2024,” Bridenstine said.
“To be clear, we are going to the South Pole,” he said, ruling out the Apollo landing sites on the Moon’s equator between 1969 and 1972. “There is no discussion of anything more than that.”
Three different projects are in competition to build the lunar lander that will take two astronauts, one of them a woman, to the Moon from their Orion spacecraft.
The first is being developed by Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in association with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. The other two projects are run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Dynetics company.
The first flight, Artemis I, scheduled for November 2021, will not be manned: the new giant SLS rocket, currently in the test phase, will take off for the first time with the Orion capsule.
Artemis II, in 2023, will carry astronauts around the Moon but will not land.
Ultimately, Artemis III will be the equivalent of Apollo 11 in 1969, but the stay on the Moon will last longer, for a week, and will include two to five “extravehicular activities.”
“The science that we would be doing is really very different from anything we’ve done before,” Bridenstine said. “We have to remember that during the Apollo era, we thought the moon was completely dry. Now we know that there is a lot of ice water and we know that it is at the South Pole.”
Are the 8th Gen Apple Watch SE and iPad the perfect affordable products for India? We talked about this on Orbital, our weekly tech podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
