NASA has unveiled full details of their plan to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars. The Agency says it will spend US$104 billion to put humans back on the Moon by 2018. The first trip will send four astronauts to the lunar surface for a seven-day visit. That's much more ambitious than previous Apollo missions, during which two astronauts spent up to three days on the Moon.

In recent years NASA biologists have identified numerous species of
microbes living on the doorstep to the cosmos: in spacecraft-assembly facilities, on
rovers, orbiters, and circuit boards, and aboard the International Space Station. Some
species are commonplace; others are entirely new and have adapted to—and perhaps
even evolved in—the harsh conditions that NASA decontaminators have devised
expressly to eliminate them. Now they’re off to Mars, Saturn, and Europa. Almost
certainly a few are already there, alive, quietly waiting for their tiny moment in the sun.