“In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon, it will be an entire nation”
Before President John F. Kennedy famously declared at Rice University, “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” he first made his intentions clear May 25, 1961, before a joint session of Congress.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,” Kennedy told Congress.
As we celebrate the 55th anniversary of that announcement, here’s a brief look at the steps countries around the world are taking toward interplanetary travel and the goal of bringing mankind to Mars.
United States
“Engineers and scientists around the country are working hard to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars, and safely return home from the next giant leap for humanity,” reads a statement from NASA.
Following the successful launch of the Orion spacecraft Dec. 5, 2014, the goal of the United States to bring astronauts to Mars is on track for the 2030s. The first manned flight is projected for 2021 while NASA may potentially end International Space Station operations in 2024 in order to focus on making manned missions to Mars a reality.
The private sector is also pushing for a trip, with SpaceX and Boeing fighting it out to become the first to send an unmanned craft to Mars. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated he wants to reach the planet as soon as 2018 and get humans there around 2025.
European Space Agency
Promisingly, the budget of the European Space Agency increased almost 20 percent this year to $5.96 billion, though it’s still only about a third of NASA’s $19.3 billion budget for 2016. Likewise, ESA chief Jan Woerner has suggested first building a “moon village” that would act as a springboard for a mission to Mars.
Alexander Gerst, the first German to act as commander of the International Space Station, is optimistic that humanity can reach the planet within decades, telling the Associated Press, “I’m actually quite excited by the fact that us humans, we could fly to Mars, and maybe you and I will live to see it.”
In the meantime, the ESA, responsible for landing the first spacecraft on a comet, plans to land their ExoMars rover on the fourth rock from the sun “at a site with high potential for finding well-preserved organic material” around 2020. Using a drill, the rover will extract samples from the planet and analyze their physical and chemical properties.
In terms of a manned mission though, the ESA has no established plans.
Russia
Along with co-leading the ExoMars mission with the ESA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, aka Roscosmos, has discussed plans to build super-heavy rockets capable of putting a Russkie on the red planet.
In September 2015, Roscosmos said it would work with the ESA to send a lander to investigate its south pole for potentially building future lunar bases.
“We have an ambition to have European astronauts on the moon,” Berengere Houdou, head of the lunar exploration group at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Center, told BBC News last year. “There are currently discussions at international level going on for broad cooperation on how to go back to the moon.”
Roscosmos has also proposed a Mars sample return mission – collecting samples from Mars and flying them to Earth – for 2026. In November 2011, a psychological simulation of a manned Mars mission, MARS-500, was completed in Russia.
China
China’s hopes of exploring Mars took a hit in 2011 when their space probe Yinghuo-1 was destroyed. The probe was launched with Russia’s Fobos-Grunt sample return spacecraft, but the Russian spacecraft failed to exit Earth’s orbit. Together, Yinghuo-1 and Fobos-Grunt would eventually disintegrate upon re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
Undeterred, China plans to launch a craft in 2020 that will orbit and land a rover on Mars in a single mission. If the plan is successful, the rover would land on Mars the following year in time for the country’s centennial celebration of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
While China hasn’t set a firm goal for a manned mission to Mars, its development of the Long March 5 booster suggests they’re determined to establish a research base on the moon and, possibly, beyond.
