Man on the Moon

I was in kindergarten the last time man walked on the moon.  And it looks like I will have waited 47 years before it happened again.  NASA says that we will go back there around 2020 or so.

And when we go, we will be going in a spacecraft that looks much like the capsules used during the Apollo series, called the Orion.  Great photos of the Orion and the Constellation program is here, and worth checking out. 

From CNET here:

NASA officials said Wednesday that the space agency is on track to launch its first flight test in September 2008 of the Orion spacecraft, the successor to the space shuttle that’s expected to take astronauts back to the moon by 2020.

NASA is halfway through the key portion of its contract with Lockheed Martin, which is building the spacecraft, before it begins tests at the White Sands Missile Range next fall, according to Skip Hatfield, Orion manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

“We’re making great progress,” Hatfield said during a press conference here at NASA Ames Research Center. The conference was organized to provide an update on the progress of NASA’s development of the Orion spacecraft, as part of the Constellation Program.

And have you seen Google Moon?  Its like Google Earth, but its the Moon.  I suggest you zoom in closely to look at the surface contents.