“Believing that a moon base is essential for exploration of the solar system, Japan has recently announced plans to send humanoid robots to the moon to construct a robot lunar base. As part of the $2.2 billion project, the robots will begin surveying the moon around 2015, and then build the unmanned base near the moon’s South Pole by 2020.
A Japanese government panel chaired by Katsuhiko Shirai, President of Waseda University, has developed a rough outline of the project. First, the robots, weighing about 660 pounds each, will begin by surveying the moon, taking images of the surface, collecting rocks, and returning the rocks to Earth via rocket for seismographic research. Later, robots will be sent to the moon to construct the lunar base for themselves.”
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Of course they are. The Japanese are always well ahead of the rest of us!!! They\’re probably already time travelling!
I, for one, welcome our new East Asian overlords…
Finally, a big project concerning space exploration and investigation. It’s always a good news when people are investing in projects to find out more about other planets or in this case at least out satellite – Moon.
The Cylons are coming…..
Well, as long as i can take a joyride on one of Bransons intergalactic trains to visit it before im old and craggy… i don’t mind
I think this is one of the coolest space-related projects in many years…. However, what is the use of it? Why would non-living entities need a BASE? It’s not like they need to go indoors to eat and sleep…
(Unless the robots will be preparing the base for future human visitors. Now THAT would be sensible.)
So what did we do for all those years with a shuttle?? Revolve around the Earth? And for what? The shuttle program was supposed to take us to new places, explore nearby planets? But we circled the Earth for 30 years… sigh. Leave it to the Japanese.
This is not only an awesome post, thank you Derren and company, but the calibre of comments on this blog are well worth the read