President Barack Obama wrote an article for CNN stating that Americans will undertake manned missions to Mars in the 2030s.
“We have a clear and vital goal for the next chapter of America’s space history: to send humans to Mars in the 2030s and bring them safely back to Earth, with the ambition of staying there for an extended period,” the president wrote.
According to Obama, to achieve this goal, it is necessary to “continue the cooperation between government and private innovators, and we are ready to move forward. Within two years, private companies will send astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time,” he added, stating that more than “a thousand companies” are currently working on private space initiatives.
The president also emphasized that the missions to be carried out in the coming years, both by NASA and private companies, “will teach us how humans can live away from Earth – something we need to understand for the long journeys to Mars.”
Obama also expressed his excitement for space missions since he was a child in Hawaii and highlighted the “significant investments” made by his administration since 2008 in modernizing NASA.
“I still have the same sense of wonder about our space program that I had as a child. It represents an essential part of our character – curiosity and exploration, innovation and ingenuity, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and doing it before anyone else,” Obama noted, recalling that Americans have already sent reconnaissance missions to all the planets in the Solar System and even to Pluto.
Source: noticias.terra.com.br