Amazon announces plans to ship packages to the moon by 2020

Risingbd Desk: More than four decades after man last walked on the moon, space experts are delivering lunar equipment so we can set up a permanent home.

Jeff Bezos, the boss of Amazon, says he wants to start delivering equipment to the moon to help set up the first human settlement.

The Earth-to-Moon cargo delivery service would carry as much as 10,000 pounds of goods to the Moon's South Pole and could be lifting off in 2020.

Bezos owns a private space company called Blue Origin and he hopes it will provide the lunar equivalent of Amazon Prime.

It will mainly be delivering equipment that early moon settlers would need, he wrote in a white paper outlining his ideas.

Bezos has already reserved his parking spot near the Shackleton Crater on the South Pole.

It's a prime spot because it has constant sunlight and water nearby could be used as a source of hydrogen for rocket fuel, according to The Verge.

The sunny spots of the moon are quickly becoming valuable real estate. 

Shackleton Crater could be turned into 'an oasis of warm sunlight surrounded by a desert of freezing cold darkness' Nasa said.

Some experts believe that that routinely parking a piece of equipment on one spot could mean they take ownership of that piece of land.

This cargo service would help to enable 'future human settlement' of the moon, Mr Bezos wrote in his white paper, which was obtained by the Washington Post.

'It is time for America to return to the Moon — this time to stay,' Bezos told Washington Post. 

'A permanently inhabited lunar settlement is a difficult and worthy objective. I sense a lot of people are excited about this', he said.

This proposal came just days after Elon Musk said his company would fly two citizens around the moon next year.

Rather than visiting and then leaving, Bezos' plans would mean actually leaving things on the moon for the first time.  

He said the mission could only happen with partnership with Nasa.

'Our liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission.

'I'm excited about this and am ready to invest my own money alongside NASA to make it happen', he wrote in the white paper.

With the help of Nasa, Bezos wants to develop 'incentives in the private sector to demonstrate a commercial lunar cargo delivery service'.

Just last month, Nasa's top staff were given instructions to assess the feasibility of sending humans to space with the first flight of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

The mission was originally designed to be uncrewed, and was set to launch in 2018.

In a press conference in February, officials leading the study revealed the evaluations are now well underway, and they've already created a 'hard, crisp list' of everything that will need to change 'from a hardware standpoint' in order to add crew.

Blue Origin space firm has confirmed that it is still on schedule to send paying customers into orbit as soon as 2018.

The company completed a crucial in-flight escape pod test on its New Shepard rocket in October last year.

'We're still on track for flying people — our test astronauts — by the end of 2017, and then starting commercial flights in 2018,' said Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson, speaking at the International Symposium on Commercial and Personal Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

The company expects to build six New Shepard vehicles, which are designed to autonomously fly six passengers to more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth, high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the planet set against the blackness of space.

Source: Daily Mail



Risingbd/March 6, 2017/Mukul