New settlement planned at south pole — of the moon

NASA unveiled plans Monday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts on the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020, 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, and then gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The moon settlement would be a way station for crews headed to Mars, and would provide not only safe haven but also hydrogen and oxygen to make needed water and rocket fuel.

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 commercial space businesses, the agency would have enough to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

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

Earth's first off-world colonists will cruise the surface in a new-generation lunar lander that will function like a low-gravity pickup truck, possibly journeying to the far side to build the most ambitious collection of observatories ever constructed, NASA said.

"We will begin with short missions. Then we will build up to the point where we are staying 180 days, and then we will have a permanent presence," Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems, said at a news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

According to NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, the agency met with hundreds of scientists, potential international partners and space businesses over the past year to discuss the options — whether the plan should be based around sorties to the moon or around an outpost and later settlement.

The conclusion, she said, was that an outpost was the best for science and in preparation for exploration deeper into space.

Dale said the team debated where the outpost should be established, with a focus on either the lunar north or south pole.

"Conditions at the south pole appear to be more moderate and safer," she said.

The south pole in particular is constantly bathed in light and would be an ideal place to collect solar power, plus the site has possible resources to mine nearby, Cooke said.

Previous NASA moon missions detected unusual amounts of hydrogen at both poles.

Some scientists have speculated this could be traced to hidden ice deposits, a potential source of water for moon colonists. A recent study has raised doubts about that theory.

Officials said the area around the lunar south pole has craters that 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.

NASA officials said they won't make a final decision about where to build the lunar base until they obtain results from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a mapping mission scheduled for launch in 2008.

It seems appropriate that NASA is now aiming for the lunar south pole because agency Administrator Michael Griffin is fond of telling people that one model for lunar exploration and development is what has happened on Antarctica. While the Earth's South Pole was first visited in the early 20th century, it wasn't until the 1950s that researchers returned and decades later before they had established permanent, year-round settlements.

NASA's vision for the moon is more than just American astronauts — it includes space travelers from other countries.

The rockets and space capsule that would take astronauts back to the moon would be exclusively American, but Dale said the mission needs the cooperation of other nations. NASA officials have met with representatives from the European Space Agency and the national space agencies of Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, England, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea and the Ukraine.

In 2004, the year after the shuttle Columbia accident that killed seven astronauts, President Bush announced the Vision for Space Exploration, which proposed a return to the moon by 2020 as the first step to an eventual manned mission to Mars.

Congress almost unanimously embraced the general plan last year, but questions remain about its funding.

Since then, NASA has embarked on a $100 billion-plus program to design a new Orion spaceship, a pumped-up version of the Apollo capsule, and the Ares rocket to carry the Orion into space. Dale said the costs of building a moon colony would not require an increase in the NASA budget, currently $17 billion per year. To free up money to carry out the vision, NASA will mothball the space shuttle by 2010.

But skeptics, such as the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office, have warned that NASA is unlikely to be able to carry out its plans with so little money. Already NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has cut funding of space science and aeronautics research to help pay for the moon program, the space shuttle and the International Space Station, a move that has drawn criticism.

And some space scientists say manned exploration is an expensive proposition whose benefits are too unclear at a time when robotic explorers can perform many tasks far more cheaply.

Additional information from The Associated Press, USA Today and Los Angeles Times

Information in this article, originally published December 5, 2006, was corrected January 7, 2006. A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to the "dark side" of the moon instead of the "far side." The moon has no permanently dark side, but its rotation keeps the same side constantly facing Earth. The far side is ideal for astronomy because it is shielded from most manmade radio interference.