Nasa plans lunar camp

Washington: Nasa unveiled plans on Monday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020.

This is the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars.

The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travellers headed onward and would provide not only safe haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel.

Price tag

Nasa officials declined to put a price tag on what will clearly be an extremely expensive venture. But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

If the project goes ahead as planned, it would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

Nasa Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said the agency met with hundreds of scientists, potential international partners and space businesses over the past year to discuss lunar options - most pressingly whether the plan should be based around a series of sorties to the moon or a permanent outpost and later settlement.

The conclusion, she said, was that an outpost would be the best for science and to prepare for exploration deeper into space.

"The lunar base will be a central theme in our going forward plan for going back to the moon in preparation to go to Mars and beyond," lunar exploration chief Scott Horowitz said.

"It's a very, very big decision, and it's one of the few where I've seen the scientific community and the engineering community actually agree on anything."

Concept

Dale said that once they endorsed the concept of an outpost, which would be about the size of the National Mall, the team debated where to put it, with a focus on either of the moon's two poles.

"Conditions at the south pole appear to be more moderate and safer," she said. The south pole is bathed in almost constant light and would be an ideal place to set up solar power collectors for an electrical system - a precondition for achieving the kind of "living off the land" that Nasa is aiming for.

Horowitz also said the polar sites were scientifically exciting because "we don't know as much about the lunar poles as we know about Mars."

Officials said the area around the lunar south pole has craters that most likely hold volatile gases that could be collected for commercial purposes. Highest on the list of possible targets is helium-3, a form of the gas seldom found on Earth but possibly well suited as a nuclear power fuel.