ISS Could Serve As Base Camp For Future Moon Missions
ISS Above Earth The station as seen from space shuttle Discovery in March 2009. NASA The world's leading space agencies are reportedly discussing the use of the International Space Station as a launch pad for a manned trip around the moon. The goal would be to test whether the station could be a base camp for missions to asteroids and Mars, the BBC reports today. Officials at NASA, the ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have circulated letters discussing the possibility of an Apollo 8-style lunar orbit mission. "We need the courage of starting a new era," Europe's director of human spaceflight, Simonetta Di Pippo, told BBC News. The idea is to assemble a small spacecraft on-site at the ISS and use it to ferry a team of astronauts around the moon. The mission would resemble Apollo 8, the first mission to carry humans around another celestial body. The spacecraft would...