Thursday, March 4, 2010

Japan axes manned lunar landing funds

Nikkei.net news reports Japan's budget writers have shelved plans for a manned moon mission, deciding according to Bloomberg "$11 billion minimum expense" to develop vehicle and booster are too high."

"The decision, outlined in a draft report, was made by a panel headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the newspaper said."

No indication yet if further austerity measures from authorities are affecting JAXA's planned follow-up mission to Kaguya, the orbiter lander/rover SELENE-2.

1 comment:

Monty said...

Gutted. My hopes were on the Japanese to get there and do something great.

Oh well. India? China?

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