NASA, the American space agency, has unveiled plans for one of the largest rockets ever built to take a manned mission to the far side of the moon.

It will ferry a mother ship and lunar lander into Earth orbit to link up with a smaller rocket carrying the crew. Once united they will head for the moon where the larger ship will remain in orbit after launching the lunar lander and crew.

The design emerged during a space science conference in Houston, Texas, last week. The plan is part of Nasa’s “Return to the Moon” programme set in motion by President George W Bush two years ago.

Full article here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2092495,00.html

Two reasons to land on the lunar farside:

It will be something that Apollo never did and therefore quell the arguments
that we've been there and done that.

We will have samples of the lunar farside, which unless some of those lunar
meteorites may have come from there, we also have never done before.

Plus we need a place to bury our nuclear wastes so we can have them all
explode and once and... oh wait, I already said that elsewhere.