WASHINGTON: Vice President Mike Pence announced Tuesday that the United States intends to send astronauts back to the Moon within five years, with a woman first in line to set foot on the lunar surface. "It is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon, within the next five years," Pence said in a speech in Huntsville, Alabama. "Let me be clear, the first woman and the next man on the Moon will both be American astronauts launched by American rockets from American soil," he said. In his speech, Pence criticized the "bureaucratic inertia" and "paralysis by analysis" that he said had resulted in the SLS delays, and called for a "new mindset" at the space agency. "If commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the Moon in the next five years, then commercial rockets it will be," he said.

Source: Bangkok Post March 26, 2019 18:33 UTC