By successfully establishing a presence on the Moon, we will enhance life on Earth and prepare to explore the rest of our solar system — and beyond! Exploration of the Moon also creates new business opportunities for technological innovations and applications and utilization of new resources.

The energy required to send objects from the Moon to space is much less than from Earth to space. This could allow the Moon to serve as a source of construction materials within cis-lunar space. Rockets launched from the Moon would require less locally produced propellant than rockets launched from Earth.

A trip to the Moon and back could be completed in under a week, and the surface is rich in resources. Lunar dust contains hydrogen, oxygen, iron and other metals, and if these resources could be mined, it could provide a close off-world source of water and building materials.

Exploration of the Moon and Mars is intertwined. The Moon provides an opportunity to test new tools, instruments and equipment that could be used on Mars, including human habitats, life support systems, and technologies and practices that could help us build self-sustaining outposts away from Earth.

NASA is under presidential orders to land humans on Mars by 2033, and NASA-funded engineers are studying a way to build potential human habitats there by producing bricks from pressurized Martian soil. The European Space Agency has a long-term goal to send humans but has not yet built a crewed spacecraft.

There were six crewed U.S. landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings, with no soft landings happening between 22 August 1976 and 14 December 2013.

three nations

NASA said it would cost $35,000 a night for stays on the ISS, and the price to get there is estimated to be $50 million. Virgin Galactic has said it may in the short term raise the price of its tickets, which today cost $250,000. Despite the high costs, Virgin Galactic expects high demand from the wealthy.

A crew of private astronauts will pay around $55 million each to spend about eight days at the International Space Station next January in what would be a new step for joint private-public space missions. It would be the first time an entirely private mission sends astronauts to the International Space Station.

about 3 days

FAQ – Spacecraft

around seven months

And that’s exactly what the US, Europe, Russia, and China plan to do next year. Three missions are scheduled to blast off in July 2020: NASA’s Mars 2020; ExoMars 2020, run jointly by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s Roscosmos; and the Mars 2020 mission of the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

Alyssa Carson

NASA is still aiming for human missions to Mars in the 2030s, though Earth independence could take decades longer. In November 2015, Administrator Bolden of NASA reaffirmed the goal of sending humans to Mars.

However, the surface is not hospitable to humans or most known life forms due to the radiation, greatly reduced air pressure, and an atmosphere with only 0.16% oxygen. Human survival on Mars would require living in artificial Mars habitats with complex life-support systems.

After the Earth, Mars is the most habitable planet in our solar system due to several reasons: Its soil contains water to extract. It isn’t too cold or too hot.