Space experts worry US won't make it to Mars by 2030s





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At a hearing in Washington, Senator Bill Nelson said the White House decision to return to the Moon -- a program former president Barack Obama halted in order to focus on reaching Mars -- could drag down the whole process.

"We don&39;t want to rob the NASA budget of what is the goal, and the goal is to get to Mars with humans," said Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, which is home to Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center.

"Do these missions help us achieve our goal of getting humans to Mars?" he asked.

In 2009, an independent expert panel known as the Augustine Commission warned that NASA&39;s resources did not match its lofty goals.

With an annual budget of around $18-billion, NASA would need an extra $3-billion per year to make it to Mars, it found.

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And the National Academies of Science has calculated that if NASA&39;s budget continued on its current path, "forget the scenario of getting to Mars by the 2030s. It would take us until 2050," Nelson added.

"I don&39;t think we want to wait that long."

Global partners concerned

In 2017, Congress&39;s NASA authorization bill required NASA to define and deliver to Congress a step-by-step plan for reaching Mars.

"We don&39;t have this roadmap yet. It is seven months overdue," Nelson said.

"What gives? Let&39;s see the program for going to Mars and see where all this other fits in."

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"Our international partners want us to lead," he told lawmakers.


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Even more, aerospace experts have identified about a dozen technologies that "we need to start working on pretty much immediately if we have any hope of landing humans on Mars in the 2030s," Carberry added.

"Some will take quite a while to achieve, Carberry said. "We have to start working on them now."

Praising the bipartisan support for NASA he sees among lawmakers, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican who heads the Senate subcommittee on space, said he hopes Congress&39;s next NASA funding bill will lay out a longer term vision, rather than going year to year.

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"This next NASA authorization, the hope is that it will reach further and be bolder in its aspirations," he said.


"The one most important thing is constancy of purpose," she answered.
