(Photo of the moon by NASA/Apollo 17)
NASA have retired their famous and now historical Space Shuttles. The moon is as it ever was. What’s Up for 2012 in terms of space traveling?
Some good news for NASA are still arriving from Mars where a small but very resistant robot still explores the planet. “Opportunity” suffers from some senior illnesses, but is still working. Three out of four wheels are okay, so he drives backwards. For the philosophers: Opportunity emerges as a surprise. Some photos here.
Flying to Mars still takes a long time – too much for human beings at the moment. So where to go?
We had the first man on the moon at the end of the 1960s. Huge parts of the planet are still undiscovered. Mostly the so-called backside. Scientists recently found a micro organism that survived there. How come without water and oxygen?
Former space traveler Buzz Aldrin, among the crew who “conquered” the moon back then is very keen on the future:
“My vision is to enable more and more people to experience the aspects of space travel, and I’d like to see different ways of getting to Earth’s orbit…. Access to Earth orbit is the most difficult part of space. Once you get there you can do many, many things,” he wrote in 2003 in a personal note Developing the Concept of Multi-Crew Modules.
Some critics say, he reaches too far with those ideas.
Back to NASA or ESA, the Europeans working in and on space devices. There are some projects upcoming. One is called MAVEN. Read what it’s about via this link.
On a sidenote: The company that runs the local public transport in Saxony Anhalt (Eastern Germany) is also called nasa. So traveling with a nasa mobile isn’t that difficult…
the transatlantic diablog 📷🔖 
Sweet! I’m gonna catch a ride with nasa! 🙂