Friday, February 15, 2008

"British Moon probe wins UK-NASA backing"

This sounds promising. I like the idea of space collaboration.

LONDON (Reuters) - A plan for the first British-led mission to the Moon won the backing of an Anglo-American space committee on Friday.

The Joint Working Group on lunar exploration named the proposed unmanned MoonLITE launch as its primary mission for collaboration.

The 100 million pound launch would fire three or four darts carrying measuring instruments into the surface of the moon from an orbiting satellite.

Scientific data recorded by the darts would be transmitted up to the satellite and relayed back to Earth.

The working group brings together experts from America's NASA and Britain's space authority, the British National Space Centre (BNSC).

But the piece contains this bit of journalistic error.
Potential targets for the MoonLITE probes include the Moon's permanently dark far side and its two shadowed polar regions. [emphasis added]
Please, Tim Castle of Reuters, take some time to do a few seconds of research.

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