SPACE1's Moon Program
Over the weekend, Space1 outlined its aggressive Moon Program, in a series of six step by step lunar missions, each technologically more challenging than the previous, until ultimately leading to a manned landing on the Moon.
Pack your bags - a lot of things must happen in a short period of time and if everything goes according to plan and scheduling, the landing could take place sometime in 2019. If not, if there is some delay, or the alignments are missed due to in-climate weather, the landing could be pushed outwards to 2020, but we don't want that to happen as it might interfere with the 2020 Oppositional Mars landing. We will hope for the best.
The first Moon mission, Across the Moon Face, is a simple fly by in front of the Moon, capture images and/or video, then return to the Earth. The lunar data captured on this flight could be used for a future lunar atlas, or not.
The second mission is a Lunar Mapper Mission to capture images of selected regions, possibly making an atlas that could show selected sites suitable for colonization and the location of potential Moon bases.
The third Moon mission, is the March 24th Commemorating Impactor Mission, that targets lunar craters Alphonsus and/or Ptolemaeus, with increasingly closer and closer stills and/or video until termination. These images as well could contribute to a lunar atlas.
The fourth lunar mission is a Polar Orbiter venture, to the South Pole of the Moon, capturing imagery and studying the region. Again, images of the South Pole could potentially contribute to the Lunar Atlas.
The fifth Moon mission is one of the most fantastic - a Trip to the Far Side. Less is known about the enigmatic Far Side which looks very different. When flyby conditions are best to approach a small plot of the far side, the mission will take enough images to create a map and contribute it to the Moon Atlas. Will any of the Soviet or Chinese probe sites become visible?
The sixth ultimately breathtaking and super exciting mission is a fabulous adventure, a Manned Moon Landing, and technically by far the most challenging. It would be easier to send down a robot to the surface, but this is a manned mission for a human. The human could carry some very high technology assist in terms of Augmentation to facilitate working and walking on the Moon's surface and to make the mission ultimately safe.
