Men on the Moon

by Jiří Kračman

With the 2019 budget proposed by the Trump administration, NASA is going to have all the resources they need to pursue exploration and research of the Earth's only natural satellite. From the $19.9 billion, $10,5 billion of it is supposed to be dedicated to Lunar exploration.

But it won't be just a visit this time, they're coming there to stay. The plan is to create a space infrastructure on the Moon, that will allow profound research. Not only are we going to acquire more information about the Moon, but it will also allow us to go even further beyond. The Mars is supposed to be the first destination after settling on the Moon and the rest of our solar system will follow. The initial landings on the Moon should be made by the year 2020, but that will be just a ',scout mission'' .The first crewed landing should happen in 2023.

The last manned landing on the Moon surface took place in 1972. It was made by the crew of Apollo 17. Since then, there have been many flybys and rover deployments, but that's surely not as exciting as an actual landing. The initiative came from partnering with other companies interested in exploring the Galaxy like: Firefly Aerospace or Moon express. They also collaborated with Elon Musks Space X during their attempts to get to the Moon.

NASA released a great video towards the end of last year, where they officialy announced their intentions, although they have been known before. Now we can just hope, that everthing goes as intented and we can enter a new age of space exploration during our lifetime.