Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Where are we going?
building the service module for NASA's successor to the Space Shuttle, the Orion capsule. The ESA says it is preparing for an unmanned flight of the capsule in 2017, including lunar orbit, and a manned mission to lunar orbit in 2019. In addition, speculation is mounting that NASA's plans call for a manned mission to the L2 Lagrange point, located some 60,000 KM on the other side of the moon from Earth -- an ideal testing ground for robotic, and perhaps manned, landings on the moon and eventually Mars.