President Barack Obama is throwing a spotlight on NASA’s plan for Mars exploration – and habitation – in advance of this week’s White House-backed conference on the frontiers of technology.
“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time,” Obama said in an essay published today on CNN.com.
The president’s space vision statement comes in the wake of SpaceX billionaire founder Elon Musk’s unveiling of a plan that could theoretically put settlers on Mars before NASA astronauts get there.
That plan calls for building giant rockets over the next decade that could start trips to Mars in the mid-2020s. It’s not exactly clear how Obama’s vision meshes with Musk’s, but they could conceivably be compatible.
Today Obama highlighted NASA’s recently announced initiative to support the development of deep-space habitats suitable for trips to Mars. That initiative, known as NextSTEP-2, sets aside $65 million over the next two years for six companies to develop on-the-ground habitat prototypes.
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