The Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) has been coordinating a community effort to establish the Lunar Exploration Roadmap. This roadmap is broad because it encompasses three themes: Science, Feed Forward to Mars (and beyond), and Sustainability (including commercial on ramps and ISRU development). It also stresses the importance of NASA planning early to transition from the Moon to Mars and to accomplish this through commercial on ramps that will foster private sector involvement, as well as involvement of international partners through the Global Exploration Strategy (now the International Space Exploration Coordination Group). The roadmap builds upon previous work dating back to the mid-1980s (e.g., Status and Future of Lunar Geoscience, 1986), through the 1990s (e.g., Geoscience and a Lunar Base: A Comprehensive Plan for Lunar Exploration, 1990; LExSWG, 1992, 1995), and into this decade (e.g., US National Space Policy, 2006; NAC Tempe Workshop Report, 2007; Scientific Context for Exploration of the Moon, 2007).
The roadmap is arranged by theme where the goals, objectives and investigations are outlined for each theme. The objectives and investigations are prioritized and time phased, which are then used to create the roadmap. It has been constructed via community input from last years Lunar Science Forum and via a web site that was active for 4.5 months.
The Lunar Exploration Roadmap is a living document and will be updated and further developed over time as more data becomes available and as requests from NASA for further analyses by LEAG Specific Action Teams impact the roadmap.