The high capacity cargo lander would be launched aboard Ariane 5 rocket. The mission would be launched from Kourou in 2018 taking a few days to transfer from Earth to a Low Circular Lunar orbit. A landing would then take place at the Lunar south pole and the deployed equipment and payload would be operational for one year once on the moons surface.
Once set upon the lunar surface, it would release a small Moon rover to trundle across the regolith (soil) and to potentially explore polar craters on the Moon hiding vast reserves of water-ice deep in their shadows (BBC).
A a TWO-DAY PAN-EUROPEAN LUNAR MEETING to be held in Berlin, Germany on 19th and 20th April 2012 to be held under the umbrella of the NASA Lunar Science Institute's European nodes. Some of THE POSSIBLE INTERESTS [PDF] in the exploration of the Moon include astronomical, astrophysical, geological, commercial, resource utilization, and strategic considerations, as well as its use as an outpost for future human exploration of the Solar System, [PDF].
A DOZEN OR MORE MOON MISSIONS are being planned by China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia, the United States, and the X-Prize Foundation international teams over the balance of the current decade. Each will be an affirmative step to returning human beings to the surface of the Moon in the decade of 2020.
The next mission set to launch to the Moon is NASA'S LADEE aboard a MINOTAUR-V booster rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Va. in 2013. It will be the first lunar spacecraft ever launched from Virginia. LADEE will gather detailed information about conditions near the surface and environmental influences on lunar dust. It will not conduct surface operations, however.
