America must continue to be a leader, willing to invest real and intellectual capital, to develop a balanced space exploration program.

An entirely unexplored world, with a surface area nearly twice that of the United States, lies in Earth‘s backyard just a few days‘ travel away. NASA now has an opportunity to begin to explore the far side of the Moon with an affordable mission. It can use assets from both the human and robotic programs, and join together exploration and science to address fundamental questions about the origins of the Earth-Moon system and the first stars/galaxies in the early universe.