NASA Details Plans for Railway System on the Moon

2024 · VOA Learning English

This speaker is a general-american model. Each line below can be recorded and scored against it.

Transcript

1. The American space agency NASA is providing details about a railway system it plans to build on the surface of the moon.

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2. The system aims to provide a “robotic transport system” to support future lunar activities of astronauts visiting the moon, NASA said in an online statement.

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3. The railway would be part of NASA’s Artemis program. It seeks to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

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4. The agency has set a target landing date of September 2026 to place astronauts on the surface of the moon.

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5. NASA has said it also plans to establish a long-term moon base where astronauts could do their own exploring and carry out science experiments.

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6. Agency officials have said the base could be built as soon as the 2030s. It could also serve as a possible launch site for future exploration of Mars.

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7. Last month, NASA also announced new efforts to develop and test new vehicle models designed to explore the moon.

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8. The lunar rail proposal is called the Flexible Levitation on a Track, or FLOAT.

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9. NASA said such a railway system will be “critical to the daily operations” on the moon.

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10. The main purpose of FLOAT would be to provide transportation services in areas of the moon where astronauts are active, the space agency said.

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11. This will include carrying loads of lunar soil and other materials to different areas of the lunar surface.

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12. NASA has said it plans to mine such soil, called regolith, for substances that could support astronaut activities on the moon.

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13. Regolith can contain materials like water or liquid forms of oxygen and hydrogen.

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14. Those elements could be used to support astronauts and their equipment during long stays on the moon.

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15. The other main use of the proposed railway would be to transport larger loads of materials and equipment to and from the areas where spacecraft land.

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16. The FLOAT system is already being developed by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

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17. It is based on magnetic levitation a commonly used technology in high-speed rail development.

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18. Drawings by NASA suggest the plans call for flat, magnetic panels, called robots, to float, or levitate, over a flat rail line, or track.

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19. The robots have no moving parts and are unpowered. They are pushed along the track by electromagnetic energy.

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20. NASA said the simple design of the carrier robots should help them last a long time and require little ongoing care.

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21. The system’s tracks can be placed directly on the lunar surface, avoiding the need to build a complex, permanent structure.

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22. They could also be moved around to change the transportation path.

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23. A smaller version of the FLOAT system will permit robots to transport loads up to 30 kilograms at speeds of about 0.5 meters per second, the agency said.

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24. A larger system could also be built, to enable load transports involving up to 100,000 kilograms of regolith.

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25. Such a system could permit trips of “multiple kilometers per day,” NASA explained.

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26. The agency is currently developing and testing different parts of the FLOAT system.

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27. FLOAT is one in a series of NASA development projects that recently received additional financial assistance to keep running.

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28. The projects are part of a NASA program called Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC).

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29. Each of the projects received “up to $600,000 to continue working over the next two years” to progress further.

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30. FLOAT and the other projects already passed NIAC’s first development phase and are entering the second.

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31. If the efforts continue to show promise, they will be able to enter phase III, which provides additional funding and support from NASA.

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32. After that, the projects will be considered for a future space mission. I’m Bryan Lynn.

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