Summary
As the United States races to put humans back on the moon for the first time in nearly 50 years, a NASA-funded lab in Colorado aims to send robots there to deploy telescopes that will look far into our galaxy, remotely operated by orbiting astronauts. The radio telescopes, to be planted on the far side of the moon, are among a plethora of projects underway by the U.S. space agency, private companies and other nations that will transform the moonscape in the coming decade.
Sometime in the coming decade, Burns' team will send a rover aboard a lunar lander spacecraft to the far side of the moon.
Working out of a small lab on the Boulder campus, Mellinkoff and two fellow graduate students have built a prototype of the robot named Armstrong (named for the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong).
In January, the China National Space Administration landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon, with a long-term aim of building a base on the moon.
India was scheduled to send a rover to the moon this month.
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