As we all can hear and know, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, popularly called NASA is targeting to put a man on Mars by 2030. Preparations already started within the last decade. Test flights to the international space station for more experiments in zero gravity and physical conditioning for astronauts have already begun earlier this year.
NASA is all set to put the first man to Mars that’s why administrator Charles Bolden didn’t take it lightly when a committee member suggested that the agency could actually be competing with other space agencies and private contractors like SpaceX in a space race to Mars.
“No commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars,” Bolden stated bluntly.
Bolden recaps NASA’s aim to the US House Committee on Science Space and Technology last Thursday morning. The agency reiterated their goal many times during the meeting as he answered many questions about NASA’s progress and missions from climate change data gathering, their next generation James Webb Space Telescope launch, a probe they’re about to send to Europa and their expedition to move a part of an asteroid close to the moon so they can study it.
“ARM (the Asteroid Redirect Mission) is how we get there (to Mars)”, he added.
The asteroid will be a testing ground for astronauts and equipment alike for their big road round-trip to Mars. The astronauts are bound to go to the asteroid. Bolden also offered a big vision and rationales for prioritizing the extra-terrestrial expedition.
“We need to understand Mars and what happened to it to understand what might happen to Earth. Mars is the planet that is most like earth. And it will sustain life when humans get there in the 2030s,” Bolden added.
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