NASA Chief: No Manned Missions to the Moon ‘in My Lifetime’

The United States will not be sending a human to the moon anytime soon because “we can only do so many things,” NASA chief Charlie Bolden said.

“I don’t know how to say it any more plainly,” Bolden said last week at a meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington. “NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio — and we are not planning for one.

“NASA is not going to the moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” he said, according to the SpacePolitics.com blog.

Instead, the space agency would continue to focus on human missions to asteroids and to Mars.

“We intend to do that, and we think it can be done,” Bolden said.

The NASA administrator’s comments came amid growing interest in sending humans to the moon within the private sector and among several foreign countries.

For instance, Russia recently rekindled its plans for a robotic moon exploration program — its first new moon mission since Luna 24 was launched in 1976, Fox News station WTTG in Washington reports.

Russian space scientists also are developing a new plan to reconnect with the moon, one scientist told Fox.