President Barack Obama wants to make sure that Mars is part of his legacy.
In an opinion column published on CNN on Tuesday, Obama said that NASA and the u.s. government are working together with private companies in order to carry a manned mission american to the Red Planet by 2030.
“I’m excited to announce that we are working with our business partners to build habitats that can support and transporter astronauts on missions of long duration in deep space,” writes Obama in the column. “These missions will teach us how humans can live away from the Earth, something that we will need in the long journey to Mars.”
NASA has been nothing shy at the time of promoting its plan to send humans to Mars in 2030. In recent years, however, new missions, private Mars, planned by SpaceX of Elon Musk and Mars One just to mention a few, have come out with a target date even more ambitious.
last month, Musk stunned the world with his bold plan to make humans a “species multiplanetaria” with its goal of establishing a martian colony with 1 million residents on the Red Planet. During his presentation at the International Conference on Aviation held in Guadalajara, Mexico, Musk said that a partnership between the public and private sectors would be necessary for humans to reach Mars.
SpaceX is expected to start to send landers robotic to Mars in the next few years, and is consulting with NASA for these missions are conducted in a legal and ethical manner from the scientific perspective.
“NASA is providing advice to SpaceX on the implementation of planetary protection in the missions of demonstration robotics on the Red Planet, through the Act of Spatial Agreement,” said a representative of NASA.
In August, NASA chose a half-dozen partners to develop prototypes of the habitats in deep space that Obama mentioned in his opinion column. SpaceX is one of those partners, although the company is working on a huge ship that Musk plans to transport up to 100 people on a trip between Earth and Mars.
One of the selected companies was Bigelow Aerospace, which has already seen one of their habitats is to be sent to the International Space Station.
The column of Obama also makes it clear that NASA does not follow the model of Mars One, which proposed to send volunteers to Mars and those who do not have plans to return to the Earth.
“We have established a clear goal for the next chapter of the saga american in space: to send humans to Mars by 2030 and return them safely to Earth, with the ultimate goal of some day stay on the Red Planet for a longer period of time.”
The president’s statements are made as you prepare for the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday. The conference will include a panel that will discuss the journey to Mars and will include representatives of NASA, Roddenberry Foundation, Virgin Galactic and other companies space private.
With the collaboration of Suan Pineda.
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