NASA’s robotic moon mission spins wheels
‘NASA’s plan to send robotic scouts to the moon in advance of astronauts is starting to take shape, but politics and the presidential election are stalling progress.
s appears poised to ax most if not all start-up money for an initial lunar mapping mission in 2008 but won’t finalize the agency’s budget before the election Tuesday.
Outside analysts say NASA is hesitant to draft detailed plans for follow-on flights — missions key to President Bush’s plan to return astronauts to the moon — until the election is over.
“They are not going to go forward with the vision until they see how the election is going to turn out, and that’s true of Congress also,” said Paul Spudis, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University who served on the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond.
“Seriously, their people are running in place and they want to see what’s going to happen,” Spudis said. “My sense is that we won’t actually get moving out on this — on the detailed architecture and strategy studies — until that is resolved.”‘
Read more at NASA’s Robotic Moon Mission Spins Wheels
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