Proposed Future Missions
The most recently launched lunar orbiter is China's Chang'e 2, which was launched in early October 2010. China is also planning to land motorized rovers and collect samples in the Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4 missions and return lunar soil samples by 2018 in the Chang'e 5 mission.
ISRO, the Indian National Space agency, is planning a second version of Chandrayaan named Chandrayaan 2. According to former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, "The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hopes to land two motorised rovers – one Indian and another Russian – on the Moon in 2014, as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission. The rover will be designed to move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do on-site chemical analysis and send the data to the mother-spacecraft Chandrayaan II, which will be orbiting above. Chandrayaan II will transmit the data to Earth." The payloads have already been finalized. ISRO has mentioned that due to weight restrictions it will not be carrying any overseas payloads on this mission. The lander weight is projected to be 1,250 kg, and the spacecraft will be launched by the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle.
Russia's Luna-Glob 1 is expected to be launched in 2015. In 2007 the head of the Russian Space Agency announced plans to send cosmonauts to the Moon by 2025 and establish a permanent robotically operated base there in 2027–2032.
The Lunar Precursor Robotic Program (LPRP) is a program of robotic spacecraft missions which NASA will use to prepare for future Moon landings. So far two orbiters have been launched in the program, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), with a third orbiter, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), scheduled to launch in 2013, but no Moon landings are scheduled yet.
The Google Lunar X Prize competition offers a $20 million award for the first privately funded team to land a robotic probe on the Moon. Like the Ansari X Prize before it, the competition aims to advance the state of the art in private space exploration. Of the several competing teams, Puli Space Technologies plans to launch in 2014 and Astrobotic Technology plans to launch in 2014 or 2015
Read more about this topic: Moon Landing
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