Mars mission moving at speed of Congress

NASA’s endeavor to send astronauts to Mars is moving as quickly as funding and technology allows, the agency said Wednesday, a day after President Obama renewed his push to explore the red planet.

“Like everyone else in the government, we go as fast as the funds are available, as technology advances and partners show interest,” said Greg Williams, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. “We think of this as a long-term endeavor.”

{mosads}In his State of the Union address, Obama said he wants America to win the race to new discoveries. He identified “pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay,” among his goals and touted progress on NASA’s Journey to Mars initiative. 

“Last month, we launched a new spacecraft as part of a re-energized space program that will send American astronauts to Mars,” Obama said.

NASA says it is well on its way to make that goal a reality. In a test flight last month, the air and space agency launched Orion, a spacecraft that it built to take humans into deep space. But before America makes it’s second giant leap for mankind, NASA must lasso an asteroid and drag it into the moon’s orbit. 

The space between the Earth and the moon, known as a cislunar space, Williams said, will serve as proving ground, a place where NASA can test its deep space exploration systems.

“We’ll send a robotic mission out into space to capture either an asteroid in orbit or pluck a large boulder off a larger asteroid, bring it back to the orbit around the Moon and visit the object with astronauts,” he said.

The goal is to get the asteroid into lunar orbit by 2025. NASA’s chosen to practice in the space between the Earth and the Moon because it’s closer than Mars.

Williams said a one-way trip to Mars takes eight or nine months, meaning NASA would need to be able to operate independently of Earth for what would be a two- to three-year mission, something it’s not yet equipped to do. A trip to the Moon, however, only takes a couple of days.

It was not immediately clear how much the mission would ultimately cost, though Obama’s fiscal 2014 budget request designated $105 million for the initiative in that year.

Because Journey to Mars is a “strategy” — not a formal program — and has no direct line of funding, NASA spokesman Josh Buck said he could not say what the total cost will be or how much has already been spent on the efforts to travel to Mars.

“What we’re pursuing is a program that will allow us to make progress with the budget currently forecasted,” Williams said in an interview with The Hill on Wednesday. “And we’ll take what comes as the economic forecast changes, but the goal is to make as much progress as we can with the funds appropriated.”

In the 2015 federal budget, $18.01 billion was allocated for NASA. The proposed federal budget for fiscal 2016 is due out Feb 2.

But with funds yet to be determined and the planet eight or nine months away, could humans really be walking on Mars by mid-2030s? 

Unlikely, but the U.S. aims be in the neighborhood by then. 

In the National Space Policy of 2010, Williams said the administration’s guidance was for NASA to visit an asteroid by 2025 and send astronauts to the “vicinity” of Mars by 2030.

“It doesn’t talk about landing on the surface of Mars,” he said.  “The technology wasn’t there yet to make such a date commitment. Landing large masses — huge systems — on the surface of Mars is something we’re still trying to learn how to do.”

Read more from The Hill:

Cruz, Obama agree on mission to Mars