WASHINGTON: Returning astronauts to the moon in 2024 could cost about $30 billion, or roughly the same price tag as the Apollo 11 spaceflight when factoring in inflation, Nasa has said. “For the whole programme, to get a sustainable presence on the moon, we’re looking at between $20 and $30 billion,” Nasa Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a TV interview, though noting that that figure does not include money already spent on the rocket and space capsule the agency plans to use for the programme, Efe news reported.
The total cost of the Apollo programme that the US launched in 1961 and concluded in 1972 was $25 billion. The climax of that programme came nearly 50 years ago when two astronauts landed on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission, which cost $6 billion at the time, equivalent to $30 billion today.
Nasa, which has dubbed its current lunar programme Artemis plans to send one male and one female astronaut to the moon in 2024.
Bridenstine recalled that the main difference between the Apollo programme and the Artemis programme is that the former culminated with brief stays on the moon while the latter will entail a permanent human presence there.
The plan will involve the recruitment of private companies and international partners, the construction of a lunar space station and manned landings at the moon’s south pole within five years.
The entire project will be framed as a practice run for a future mission to Mars. The programme includes an unmanned mission around the moon in 2020 and a manned mission that also will orbit the moon two years later. Then one male astronaut and — for the first time — a female astronaut would set foot on the lunar surface in 2024. — IANS
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