NASA will be putting man back on the moon by 2018 as a major step in its plan to expand space exploration - and humankind’s presence throughout the solar system.
One of NASA’s reasons for going back to the Moon is to demonstrate that astronauts can essentially “live off the land” by using lunar resources to produce potable water, fuel and other valuable commodities. Such capabilities are considered extremely important to human expeditions to Mars which, because of the distances involved, would be much longer missions entailing a minimum of 500 days spent on the planet’s surface.
Space travel really is the final frontier and, if I could think of one reason why I would like to live forever it’s so I could see what we discover when we finally start exploring our galaxy in earnest…
A full-screen version of the earth rise picture can be found here. It’s stunning.
