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As Japan becomes the latest country or private entity planning to send a person to the moon, RT.com takes a look at some of the most ambitious plans for a future manned lunar mission.
Whichever country or corporation returns a human to our celestial neighbor will be the first to do so since NASA's Apollo missions concluded in the early 70s. In fact, whoever ventures to the moon will be the first to go beyond low-Earth orbit since 1972.
Space exploration has generally been the preserve of nation states and their taxpayer-funded space agencies. More recently though, private companies, most notably Elon Musk's SpaceX, have been leading the way in the aerospace sector.
Billionaire Musk recently laid out his plans to colonize Mars. For some, however, a return to the moon would provide good preparation for the months-long trek to the Red Planet.
Here, RT.com takes a look at some of the frontrunners in lunar mission planning.
Source: RT
(Score: 4, Touché) by sweettea on Wednesday July 05 2017, @05:12AM (1 child)
>Japan announced an ambitious plan to land an astronaut on the moon Friday.
Ah, well, you know, Thursday is just too soon, but we can probably do Friday, eh?
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday July 06 2017, @01:31AM
No, that'd be the Moon on Friday.
Why just do what the US already did? Japan is going to get us a new Moon, call it Friday (at least the Japanese equivalent), and then land on it.