Korea Hopes to Join NASA Lunar Project
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The county's space agency submitted a bid to join a project by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to establish science stations on the surface of the moon, officials said Tuesday.
The Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) participated in a meeting of space agencies from nine countries last week to discuss next steps in the scientific exploration of the moon. However, KARI officials say that the agency's participation in the International Lunar Network (ITN) has not been determined yet.
``Right now, we have just presented our interest," said Hwang Jin-young, an official from KARI's policy department.
``Whether we will be actually doing things on the lunar surface, and if so, our level of participation in the ITN project, still depends on further discussions with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology."
In last week's meeting, the attendees discussed cooperation on a multinational project called the International Lunar Network (ITN), which is designed to gradually place six to eight fixed or mobile science stations on the lunar service. The stations will form a robotic network to replace the hardware left by the Apollo program to continue the studies of the moon's surface and interior.
Aside of KARI officials and their U.S. counterparts, representatives from space agencies in Canada, Britain, France, Germany, India, Italy and Japan participated in the talks.
All of the nine countries have submitted formal bids to join the ITN project, and plan to produce a more detailed development plan by the end of the year, KARI officials said.