SEOUL, July 29 (Yonhap) -- A high-level official from NASA visited Seoul on Wednesday to share the U.S. space agency's ambitious plan to build a lunar surface base at record speed.

The special session from Carlos Garcia-Galan, the executive for NASA's Moon Base program, came after the space agency announced in March plans to build an operational home base for Artemis astronauts to live, work and prepare for future crewed missions to Mars.

Artemis is NASA's second human lunar exploration program since the Apollo project launched in 1961.

The latest endeavor is set to run through 2032 and beyond and will be built in three phases, with the first one focusing on sending robots, drones and other exploration equipment to the moon to gather knowledge of the lunar surface by 2029.

NASA is preparing for the Artemis 3, a crewed low earth-orbit demonstration planned for launch in 2027, aimed at practicing docking with commercial lunar landers.

"We plan to expand the U.S.-South Korea private space partnership to the lunar surface and to deep space, following the workshop," said Oh Tae-seog, the administrator of the Korea AeroSpace Administration.

fairydust@yna.co.kr

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