ONWARD AND UPWARD
Nasa’s plan to fly to the Moon and harvest lunar ice to set up human colony revealed in new video
Next stop, the Moon...
NASA has outlined its plan to colonise the Moon by 2024 in a slick new video.
Voiced by William Shatner, Captain Kirk from Star Trek, the clip shows off how scientists will set up a sci-fi orbiting base around Earth's neighbour.
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Shatner says tonnes of new tech will be needed if Nasa is to reach the Moon within five years. The video concludes with the message: "We are going."
Nasa is currently shaking the donations bucket ahead of its impending lunar deadline.
It recently put in a 2020 budget amendment requesting an additional £1.25billion to go towards its various Moon projects.
The video is meant to get everyone buzzed up for the missions, which Nasa says will begin as early as next year.
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Robotic landers will first touch down on the lunar surface ahead of a 2024 manned mission.
Earlier this week, Nasa promised that the first woman to walk on the Moon will be on board the trip.
Later in the 2020s, the space agency will set up an orbiting lunar base from which missions to Mars and beyond can be launched.
Called Gateway, the permanent space station will house astronauts, laboratory experiments and more.
Humans will have to mine ice from the rock below to top up resources like drinking water and hydrogen for rocket fuel.
Nasa has just five years to reach the Moon, and is doing all it can to drub up funding and support.
"Our charge is to go quickly, and to stay," Shatner says in the video.
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"We will press our collective efforts forward with a fervor that will see us return to the Moon in a manner that is wholly different than 50 years ago."
It's been 46 years since humans last set foot on Earth's neighbour, with Nasa's Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan the last to step off the lunar surface in December 1972.
A total of twelve men have landed on Earth's rocky neighbour – a number sure to skyrocket if Nasa's plans come to fruition.
No word yet on who's been selected for its first manned mission in 50 years, but they've got a lot to live up to.
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In other space news, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos recently pledged to land a man on the moon by 2024 with a rocket built by his private space firm Blue Origin.
He also showed off sci-fi renders of his plans for giant rotating space habitats that could house a trillion people.
And here are the space mysteries that Nasa simply can't explain.
What do you think of Nasa's video? Let us know in the comments!
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