The
National Academies Press: Repairs to the space shuttle
program and the Presidents vision for returning humans to the
Moon and onwards to Mars is causing budget cuts to the science
program at NASA. One aspect that is not suffering cutbacks are
science missions related to the Moon/Mars vision. The National
Academies of Science has taken a look at NASA's lunar precursor
and robotic program to help formulate a comprehensive,
validated and prioritized set of scientific research objectives
for the Moon for the next 15 years. Their interim report, with
a full report to follow in 2007, recommends that the primary
science goals be related to a history of the Moon and
Earth-Moon system; implications for the origin and evolution of
the solar system, including the sun; and implications of all
these for the origin and evolution of life on Earth and
possibly elsewhere in the solar system. Many of the scheduled
missions over the next 10 years by the China, US, India, Europe
and Russia meet these research objectives. The committee
recommends prioritizing research at the South lunar pole-Aitken
basin, which is a proposed NASA mission that has yet to receive
funding despite being a high priority in the 2003 NRC Decadal
survey report. It also recommends creating a science research
unit within the human exploration division to help better
coordinate research goals with the objectives of returning
humans to the Moon. The committee foresees an expansion of
ground-based facilities that can receive lunar samples from
robotic return sample missions as current facilities are
inadequate. Finally the committee recommends that even if
humans do return to the Moon, they should have an extensive
array of robotic assistants to help with the science part of
the mission, a tact acknowledgment that many of the missions
related to the groups suggested research priorities are best
done by robots.
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