PRIVATE colorchange:<c”Black”> NASA would attempt its first human lunar landing since Apollo by March 2017 under the following timetable recently proposed by the U.S. space agency’s exploration systems officials:
PRIVATE tabstops:<*t(0.000,0,” “,30.000,0,” “,)> – December 2009: First flight test of the Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) upper stage through separation and booster recovery.
– June 2011: The first orbital CLV flight test.
– January 2012: Launch an unmanned Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) test vehicle on a one-to-two-month mission that would include a rendezvous demonstration with the international space station.
– March 2012: The first human CEV launch. A three-person crew would fly the CEV to the station and make the first docking there.
– June 2012: A second CEV with a crew would be launched to perform the first autonomous rendezvous and docking with the international space station .
– September 2012: First crew rotation flight to the space station using the CEV.
– December 2012: First unmanned pressurized CEV cargo delivery mission to the space station.
– March 2015: First flight test for the heavy-lift rocket’s core stage using surplus space shuttle main engines.
– March 2016: first unmanned lunar landing.
– March 2017: Three-person crew makes first lunar landing.
– 2018 -2020: Begin flying two lunar sorties a year.
Source: internal NASA documents
