The North American Space Agency NASA on Monday unveiled ambitious plans to return humans to the moon by 2018 to establish a base that could be used for transporting human explorers to Mars and "beyond", dpa reported. The plan calls for incorporating the safest elements of the shuttle programme into a new human space vehicle that could land a crew of four on the moon, said NASA administrator Michael Griffin. "We will return to the Moon no later than 2020 and extend human presence across the solar system and beyond," Griffin said at a news conference. The project would cost a projected 104 billion dollars over a 13 year period. It calls for a heavy lifter rocket that could raise up to 125 metric tons of cargo into orbit. A human crew would follow into orbit up to one month later in a crew exploration vehicle CEV. Once in orbit, the CEV would dock with the lunar lander and the propulsion stage and start its journey to the Moon. The project is currently designed for two missions per year. The crew would be able to stay on the moon for a period of up to seven days. On each trip, they would leave behind a stash of supplies for the establishment of a more permanent lunar base where astronauts could stay up to six months at a time. --More 2356 Local Time 2056 GMT
