DailyDirt: One Of These Days, Alice... Boom! POW! Straight To Mars!
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Depending on how you look at it, the current state of space exploration can be seen as dismally underfunded -- or as the most amazingly productive in history. Unmanned probes are checking out all sorts of interesting destinations in our solar system, but manned missions have lately been limited to orbiting the Earth. The unmanned space race is generating plenty of fascinating science, nonetheless. Here are just a few interesting developments in the field of space exploration.- Following the Chandrayaan mission to moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch a Mars mission in the next few years. If everything comes together just right, India's Mars Orbiter might even launch in 2013. [url]
- NASA's planetary science program is unfortunately taking a 20% cut, so NASA will still fly the Mars MAVEN atmospheric mission, but it won't be part of two other joint missions with the European Space Agency. On the other hand, the manned commercial space industry in the US will be getting more funding now that the space shuttle has retired. [url]
- Ambitiously, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) is planning a manned moon base and unmanned base stations on Mars by 2030. Prime Minister Vladmir Putin has stated, "Russia should not limit itself to the role of an international space ferryman."[url]
- To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]
Filed Under: chandrayaan, mars, moon, nasa, putin, science, space
