The American space agency, NASA had previously revealed that they will take astronauts to the moon by 2024. While talking at the space symposium on April 9, Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator stated that the upcoming lunar mission, which would take humans to moon, could not be carried out by US alone.
"Putting humans on the moon in 2024 is not an America-alone effort. We need all of our international partners. In fact, none of us can do what we want to achieve alone," said Bridenstine during the speech.
Earlier NASA made it clear that their ultimate aim is to build a permanent base on moon and they claimed that it will help humans during Mars colonization missions.
In March, Mike Pence, US Vice President had revealed that the Trump administration wants to speed up the lunar mission, a move to affirm the dominance of the country as a space superpower. It should be noted that NASA had earlier planned to land humans on the moon in 2028, but the current US government strongly insisted that the mission should be conducted before the already planned timeline.
In a recent interaction with Space.com, Bridenstine mentioned that the biggest challenge NASA will face during the upcoming lunar missions will be funding.
"We've got to make sure that we get the budgets necessary to accomplish the objective, which means we need strong bipartisan support — which we're working on really hard right now. Technically, I think it's achievable. The plans that we laid out for 2028 are the same plans that we're going to use to get to the moon in 2024. We're just going to have to move forward some of our investments, but it's all achievable" said Bridenstine.
Interestingly, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has also expressed their willingness to contribute lunar landers and life support system during the upcoming mission to Lunar Orbiter Platform Gateway.
