NASA sending lunar orbiter and China sending lunar rover this year

China has far more ambitious near and mid term space program objectives than NASA does at this time. NASA is sending a robotic orbiter. China is sending a lunar rover. If China can keep to its timetable they plan to have a manned lunar mission in 2017. This would be 48 years after NASA. However, NASA does not have the current capability to return a man to the moon. China also plans a manned lunar base.

1. NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that is scheduled for a Sept 6 2013 launch. LADEE will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. A thorough understanding of these characteristics will address long-standing unknowns, and help scientists understand other planetary bodies as well.

The LADEE spacecraft's modular common spacecraft bus, or body, is an innovative way of transitioning away from custom designs and toward multi-use designs and assembly-line production, which could drastically reduce the cost of spacecraft development, just as the Ford Model T did for automobiles. NASA's Ames Research Center designed, developed, built and tested the spacecraft.



2. China has confirmed it is on track to land a rover on the Moon later this year to scoot across the surface analyzing dust and rock samples.

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