[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Here's the article:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1199

And here:

http://www.space.com/news/060316_nasa_moonlander.html

Quote:

NASA has been rethinking its robotic lunar exploration strategy over the last 18 months and recently concluded that it has no immediate need for any unmanned Moon missions beyond the heavily-instrumented Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) currently in development for a late 2008 or early 2009 launch.


So, it seems we won't have a moon lander soon. It's a bit worrisome, because original plans called for lunar landers, lunar rovers, sample returns and so on.

[dvandorn]

Oh, I wasn't making any comments about the value of manned vs unmanned lunar programs. I was just saying that the *unmanned* program that was being planned was primarily designed to support manned lunar operations, and the most obvious reason for NASA seeing no need for it now is because they understand that there won't *be* manned lunar operations for some time to come.

I mean, it seems a very simple cause-effect relationship, to me...

-the other Doug