US looks to go back to the moon

Telegraph:

America is preparing to land a robot on the moon for the first time in four decades.

Nasa is looking for private partners to participate in the project that will see a new generation of rovers wandering across the moon’s surface.

The American space agency has set up a programme called Catalyst to exploit commercial opportunities offered by the moon.

It believes that eventually there will be a market for commercial cargo trips to the lunar surface.

"As Nasa pursues an ambitious plan for humans to explore an asteroid and Mars, US industry will create opportunities for Nasa to advance new technologies on the moon," said Greg Williams, Nasa's deputy associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. 
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“After the Apollo programme we did amazing things with robots in space.

“We went to every planet in the solar system and we rather forgot the moon, we rather felt we had been there and done that.

“In terms of human flight we retreated to earth orbit, we worked on the space shuttle and then the space station.”

For decades, information from the moon was sketchy, with grainy images being sent back to earth from an old spy satellite.

But recent lunar orbiting missions have produced far more impressive results.

Images now display a huge amount of detail including the trail of Neil Armstrong’s walk when he was the first man to set foot on the moon in July 1969 .

This work has breathed life into the hope of putting a man back on the moon.
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There is a more vigorous competition to explore the moon now, with China, Japan and India planning their own trips.  I think it was the lack of competition that led NASA funding to slip and not produce the equipment to get us there.