NASA administrator says agency closer than ever to landing humans on Mars

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle commander, said he envisioned becoming the first person to explore Mars when he checked in for astronaut training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center in 1980.

“We’re really trying to build a program”, said William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations.

NASA on Wednesday announced the agency has completed a thorough technical and programmatic review of its Mission to Mars, and everything is looking good. Some of such fundamental functions range from the making of the Orion container and to discover the Space Launch Systems (SLS) megarockets that may help get astronauts to deep-space channels. It’s believed that sometimes in the 2030s will be a likelier time for astronauts to don their space suits and embark upon the most thrilling and longest mission in human history. This demonstrates just how excited everyone at NASA is about preparing for the dynamic Mars adventure.

In 2014, an unmanned Orion capsule sailed into space, traveling 3,600 miles above the Earth, which was the furthest any spacecraft designed for humans had gone since the Apollo 17 moon mission in 1972.

NASA’s Orion capsule, which will take humans further into space with the ultimate destinations like Mars and asteroids, has been in the development stage from about 10 years.

Two ISS crewmembers, NASA’s Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are additionally midway via a yr-lengthy mission created to characterize the physiological and psychological results of lengthy length spaceflight.

Astronauts at the global Space Station (ISS) also managed to grow and eat lettuce in the orbiting lab as part of an experiment that aims to learn about food production away from Earth.

As per some reports, some NASA officials think that the development process could take a long time, and the agency will not be able to launch a mission until 2023. And he said it will eventually “enable humanity to set foot on the Red Planet, and we are committed to building the spacecraft and other elements necessary to make this a reality”.

“[Putting] boots on Mars is possibly the most exciting thing humans will ever do”, Bolden said. “We have a lot of work to do to get humans to Mars, but we’ll get there”.

Newman also mentioned the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE), one of seven science instruments that NASA’s next Mars rover will carry toward the Red Planet when it blasts off in 2020.

“We must chart a compelling course for our nation’s space program so that we can continue to inspire future generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers”, Smith told the newspaper.