Lunar sortie

A lunar sortie (or lunar sortie mission) is a human spaceflight mission to the Moon. In contrast with lunar outpost missions, lunar sorties will be of relatively brief duration.[1]

NASA sorties

On 4 December 2006, NASA announced a "Global Exploration Strategy" and lunar architecture that would implement the Vision for Space Exploration. The planned lunar missions would begin with four-person crews making several seven-day sortie missions to the moon until the power supplies, rovers and living quarters of an outpost are operational.[2]

Private lunar sorties

As of 2010, Space Adventures is a NewSpace company offering advance booking to allow private individuals to take a future lunar mission involving travel to circumnavigate the Moon. Pricing has been announced at US$100 million per seat. This mission will utilize two Russian launch vehicles. One Soyuz capsule will be launched into low-earth orbit by a Soyuz rocket. Once in orbit, the manned capsule will dock with a second, unmanned, lunar-propulsion module which will then power the circumlunar portion of the trip.[3] No time frame for the first mission has been announced.

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 01, 2011. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.