NASA is planning the next steps on the moon, permanent steps. But living a quarter million miles away from home on an airless, magnificently desolate world, has a few challenges. Experts will be available to discuss those challenges and the importance of these steps live via satellite on Friday, Feb. 24.
Veteran space station astronaut Don Pettit, who completed a six-month space flight in 2003, and lunar habitat expert Larry Toups will be available for interviews from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. CST from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. For television, interviews will be available live on the NASA TV analog satellite. Phone interviews will be available for radio and print media.
To arrange an interview, media should contact the JSC newsroom at (281) 483-5111 by 4 p.m. CST Feb. 22. The NASA TV analog satellite is on AMC 6 transponder 5C, at 72 degrees west longitude, with a downlink frequency of 3800 MHz, vertical polarization. The audio is at 6.8 MHz.
The Vision for Space Exploration will return humans to the moon by 2020. Expeditions to the moon will be used as a staging ground to learn how to live and work as a precursor to missions beyond.
Future lunar missions could last as long as six months. During these long-duration missions, astronauts’ home on the moon will provide living and working spaces and support all their physical needs. NASA is developing two lunar mockups to evaluate potential habitat designs for living and working on other planetary surfaces.
B-roll of NASA mockups and concepts of lunar habitats will air at 5:30 a.m. CST Feb. 24 and after the final interview.
For more information on NASA and the Vision for Space Exploration, visit:
