President Barack Obama is still in power, which is good news for NASA, whose budget, strategy and missions may have been revised under defeated Republication presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Space policy expert John Logsdon told Space.com's Mike Wall that plans to send humans to the far side of the moon have already been approved by the Obama administration, but were kept hush-hush in case Romney won Tuesday night's election.
The plan involves establishing a manned outpost about 38,000 miles from the moon in an area known as the Earth-moon libration point 2, or EML-2. This is a gravitationally stable spot, making it possible to "park" a spacecraft there, explains Wall. The station would service as a holding pen for astronauts so they could eventually do other things in space, like land on an asteroid (planned for 2025) or visit Mars (planned for the mid-2030s).
Mumblings of NASA's plans to send astronauts beyond the moon were reported back in September by the Orlando Sentinel's Mark K. Matthews when NASA Chief Charlie Bolden outlined the ambitious proposal to the White House.
In the meantime, a very powerful rocket called the Space Launch System and a space capsule are being developed so that NASA can theoretically begin construction on the outpost by 2021.
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