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Japanese Astronauts To Land On Moon As Part of New NASA Partnership
samedi 13 avril 2024, 12:00 , par Slashdot
The Japanese rover will support extended expeditions from Artemis landing sites that are beyond the range of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle that three American companies are developing for NASA under contracts announced April 3. The rover is designed to accommodate two astronauts for up to 30 days, with an overall lifetime of 10 years. The announcement, though, offered no details about when the Japanese astronauts would fly to the moon. 'It depends,' Nelson said at an April 10 briefing when asked about schedules, noting that the two countries 'announced a shared goal for a Japanese national to land on the moon on a future NASA mission assuming benchmarks are achieved.' 'No mission has been currently assigned to a Japanese astronaut,' added Lara Kearney, manager of NASA's extravehicular activity and human surface mobility program, at the briefing. The implementing agreement (PDF) said several factors will go into crew assignments, including progress on the pressurized rover, or PR: 'The timing of the flight opportunities will be determined by NASA in line with existing flight manifesting and crew assignment processes and will take into account program progress and constraints, MEXT's request for the earliest possible assignment of the Japanese astronauts to lunar surface missions, and major PR milestones such as when the PR is first deployed on the lunar surface.' The assumption among many in the industry, though, is that at least one of the astronauts will fly before the rover is delivered, and possibly as soon as the Artemis 4 mission, the second crewed landing, in the late 2020s. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/04/12/2152212/japanese-astronauts-to-land-on-moon-as-part-of-n...
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