Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth.
The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.
Mr Obama said he was giving NASA challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years.
“By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the Moon into deep space,” the President said. “So, we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.”
And then he added: “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth, and a landing on Mars will follow.”
Obama sets Mars goal for America
Obama to outline vision for space program despite astronaut criticism The Sydney Morning Herald
Barack Obama is set to promote his vision for the nation’s human space flight program – including putting a human on Mars – just two days after three Apollo astronauts called the new plans ”devastating”.
In an announcement to be made at Kennedy Space Centre in Florida today, the President will talk for the first time about the upheaval of NASA’s human spaceflight program outlined in his 2011 budget request in February.
It involved cancelling plans to return astronauts to the moon, investing in commercial companies to provide transport to orbit and developing new space technologies.
A senior administration official said Mr Obama would describe a vision ”that unlocks our ambitions and expands our frontiers in space, ultimately meaning the challenge of sending humans to Mars”.
NASA Gets a $6 Billion Booster for Mars and Beyond Fast Company
Find hope in this, NASA, science and Mars fans: President Obama’s new stance on NASA’s funding will likely pump no less than $6 billion into the agency to create a new heavy rocket sooner than we’d hoped. Mars is its target.
Over the previous few weeks we’ve heard rumors about what NASA’s future might look like. All of them seemed attractive compared to the grim reality we’d assumed would happen: The Space Shuttle grounded, the Constellation moonshot program canceled, big delays in getting private space ventures ready to fire humans into space, and huge job losses in NASA and its supporting industries.
Now there’s word that during a big space event tomorrow, Obama will unveil a new vision that includes $6 billion of extra cash for the space agency, on top of its original budget plans, phased over five years. This money has very specific purposes: Firstly it’s going to create 2,500 additional jobs in and around NASA’s Florida installations, and secondly it’ll result in a new large rocket that’ll be key in taking humans to Mars. Spin-off work will include continuing to develop the Orion manned space capsule to act as an emergency escape vehicle for the international space station.
Obama to unveil plans for Mars shot The Australian Broadcasting Corporation
United States president Barack Obama is set to unveil plans to create 2,500 more space jobs and select a design for a rocket to fire astronauts into deep space by 2015, The Washington Post reports.
Mr Obama will deliver what has been billed as a “major space policy speech” outlining the new future for US space exploration when he addresses astronauts, space workers and lawmakers on Thursday at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
His address comes after budget proposals in February revealed plans to axe the expensive and over-budgeted Constellation rocket project, a move that fuelled a storm of criticism from lawmakers and space enthusiasts.
But the Post reported on its website that Mr Obama’s speech would seek to soothe critics and provide more specific details of plans to recreate NASA’s human space exploration program in what a White House official said amounted to a “bold and daring” vision.
NASA: Next stop Mars? Network World
There’s lots of pressure and some speculation that President Obama will throw some sort of manned space flight bone in the direction of NASA when he addresses the space agency’s future plans this week at a Kennedy Space Center address.
What that may be could come in the form of a formal challenge to NASA to make a manned space flight to Mars in say 10 to 15 years a priority. If that were the challenge it would take quite the effort as most of the equipment needed to make such a trip is largely undeveloped.
Obama Plans ‘Major Space Policy Speech’ From Space Coast Central Florida News 13
Obama is expected to arrive on the Space Coast at 1:45 p.m. Thursday.
Then, at 3 p.m., NASA said the president will make what he called a “major space policy speech.”
After the speech, a panel discussion with experts on the space program is scheduled.
Thousands Attend Save Space Rally Central Florida News 13
Thousands rallied in support of jobs on the Space Coast Sunday afternoon.
Astronauts, NASA workers, politicians and business owners gathered at the Cocoa Expo Sports Center to have their voices heard at the Save Space Rally.
“We saw the Apollo launches shake our windows,” said Sarah Larson. “We have our roots here our hearts here. people would say where is Titusville, Florida and it’s the space capital of the world and we want to keep it that.”
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is set to visit the Space Coast Thursday to outline his plan for NASA.
Room for Debate: Where, If Anywhere, Is NASA Headed? Scientific American
On complex issues, as is often said, it is possible for intelligent people to disagree. That was certainly the case March 15 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, when five leaders of the space exploration intelligentsia met to discuss NASA’s plans for human spaceflight.
The topic of the event, the 10th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, could hardly have been more timely, given the February budget request from President Obama that sought to drastically change NASA’s direction for human spaceflight and the way the agency does that business. If the budget survives Congress, NASA could start hiring private corporations to launch U.S. astronauts into orbit rather than use its own hardware; Obama’s plan would also scrap the existing Constellation Program, including the Ares rockets being developed to lift humans beyond low Earth orbit for the first time since the 1970s.
Sen. Nelson Floats Alternate Use for NASA Commercial Crew Money Space News
As the Senate Commerce Committee begins work on a 2010 NASA authorization bill, science and space subcommittee chairman Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) is questioning whether $6 billion the U.S. space agency is seeking for developing a commercial crew taxis might be better spent on a heavy-lift rocket that could take humans beyond low Earth orbit.
Nelson told a NASA Kennedy Space Center-area audience March 19 that he expects U.S. President Barack Obama to “revamp his budget” and set specific goals for the nation’s human spaceflight program when he visits Florida April 15 to talk space.
Moon vs. Mars at Museum ScienceInsider
The American Museum of Natural History had little idea of how prescient they were being when they picked the theme for this year’s Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate. Shortly after the museum directors decided on the debate topic, “The Moon, Mars and Beyond: Where Next for the Manned Space Program?”, the federal budget was announced on 1 February, revealing that NASA’s Constellation project of crewed moon missions had been canceled. Kicking off the annual event last night to a sold-out auditorium, Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “What was originally just going to be us putting out opinions now turns out to have huge implications.”
Although moon and Mars missions are often discussed as if they were mutually exclusive alternatives, general consensus among the scientists on the panel was that even if putting a human on Mars were the paramount long-term goal, returning humans to the moon would still be a critical step toward that end. “The moon is a good place to test out the technology for a Mars mission, like life-support systems and transport vehicles. … I think that casting it in terms of ‘Do we go to the moon first or go to Mars?’ is not the right question,” Steven Squyres, principal investigator on the Mars Exploration Rover project, said after the debate.
Instead, the broader question to which the panelists kept returning was not simply which destination NASA should target first but what will happen if NASA has no clear destination at all.