IF YOU had billions to spend on sending humans into space, where would you send them? That’s the question the European Space Agency put to a team of independent experts, but it didn’t get the answer it was expecting.
In 2001, ESA unveiled an ambitious programme for space exploration centred on Mars. It plans to send a series of robotic landers to the Red Planet, followed by a manned mission by 2030. But New Scientist has learned that the Human Spaceflight Vision Group, put together by ESA’s director of human space flight, Jorg Feustel-Beuchl, says the moon is Europe’s best…
