With too little money, no roadmap, and a looming change of administration, will NASA be able to deliver its promise of a human mission to Mars by 2030s?
These were the concerns of a Wednesday hearing hosted by the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, where committee members and experts probed NASA’s direction and urged a solid plan for sending humans to the Red Planet.
Moreover, the space agency is rather pressed for time, given the possibility of a space mission-unfriendly administration taking over the White House in 2017.
“Without a roadmap to guide the agency, NASA will continue to be subject to indirection and proposed budget cuts by the White House,” warned the Committee Chair, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who criticized that NASA is focusing on too many projects.
NASA dropped plans to explore the Moon in 2010 to focus on asteroid exploration, a precursor to a Mars mission.
Last year, it announced a $1.25 billion project to send a solar robot to an asteroid in 2020, which will collect a boulder off the surface, drop its orbit around the Moon, and send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft to the space rock.
Smith dubbed the project “uninspiring” and said it has no connection to a bigger exploration roadmap – among other complaints surfacing in the space subcommittee hearing.
The Mars mission therefore is not yet fully defined, although NASA is building Orion and a rocket at present to bring astronauts to the planet. More equipment is necessary for the trip and there isn’t any final inventory yet on what these are, said former Goddard Space Flight Center director Tom Young during the committee hearing.
“We do not have a planned strategy or architecture with sufficient detail,” Young said.
Based on estimates, it could take over $1 trillion to make the manned Mars mission possible. Of particular concern, according to the National Research Council Committee on Human Spaceflight technical panel chair John Sommerer, is protecting astronauts from space radiation – a likely costly aspect of the planned trip.
But whether NASA does it or not, private efforts for exploring Mars are in the works. Elon Musk of SpaceX said he will disclose his mission to colonize Mars this year, with human missions projected to start by 2025.
On the other hand, “Mars One” – launched by a Dutch non-profit in 2012 – targets establishing the first human colony on Mars beginning in 2020. Over 200,000 individuals answered the group’s call for volunteers for a one-way travel to start the colony.
Europe, China, India, and Russia are also looking to explore Mars explore. Here is the full video of the committee hearing.
