NASA Says "Let’s Get Serious About Going to Mars"

According to published reports, NASA officials said they will have to quickly develop plans and technology to stick to President Obama’s plan to send a manned mission to Mars by the 2030s.

NASA Chief Charles Bolden told the Humans 2 Mars Summit at George Washington University that the agency sees a second opportunity to make a grand leap into space. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy announced that Americans would land on the moon by the end of the decade. The space agency went into high gear and seized the opportunity within the timeframe.

Bolden said "Interest in sending humans to Mars I think has never been higher. We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward to what I think is man's destiny — to step onto another planet."

Former NASA administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Doug Cooke, explained to the summit that a manned trip to Mars would require at least three missions. The first would launch a vehicle and crew to Earth’s closest planetary neighbor. The second mission would launch a habitat that would allow the astronauts to live on the Red Planet’s surface. The third mission would launch the vehicle that could lift off from Mars and bring the crew home.

The agency would have to launch between 200 to 400 metric tons of equipment from the Earth’s surface to complete the project. That is about the same amount of machinery that was launched for the International Space Station. NASA would have to deliver 40 metric tons of mass to Mars’ surface at one time. The agency has so far been able to land one metric ton per trip. That was done last summer when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars to explore the Gale Crater as part of the agency’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. Mike Raftery, Boeing’s director of space station utilization and explorations, said "We have to essentially land a launch pad on the surface that's then ready to launch the crew back to Earth."

Mars crews will also have to bring their own life-support systems, food, medicine, navigations equipment and communications systems. The explorers would have to take advantage of some of the resources of the planet, like water and oxygen, but the technology that they would need to use those resources doesn’t exist yet. James Reuther of NASA’s office of the Chief Technologist admitted, "We're going to have to rely on being able to live off the land. Those will require significant technology investments in order to actually bring that about." Engineers will have to find a way to shield astronauts from radiation in space and on the planet’s surface, which doesn’t have a strong enough atmosphere to protect the crew from the dangerous particles.

NASA would also have to launch precursor missions to properly plan for a human landing. Associate NASA Administrator John Grunsfeld said "It's very likely that we'll send some kind of lander or rover to the site we want to send people to first, to drill a couple meters down to tell us if we have fresh water.”

By 2020, engineers must choose an architecture for the mission, including what type of propulsion they will have to use to get to Mars and how many launches will be required. America will also have to establish partnerships with other nations. The design and technologies for the space ships will have to be completed by 2025.

Despite the time constraints and massive work they will need, NASA officials and industry experts are confident that the mission can be accomplished by the 2030s.