Giant leap II: Bush to announce plan for Mars, Moon missions

WASHINGTON -- President Bush will outline a plan for returning humans to the moon as preparation for exploring deeper space destinations, including Mars, administration sources said late Thursday.

The president's plan will call for phasing out the U.S. role in the international space station and abandoning the beleaguered space shuttle program, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At the same time, the president is not expected to call for sending a human to Mars anytime soon, but instead will lay out a series of goals aimed at helping NASA recover from the Columbia disaster and build on the success of the recent landing of a robotic rock hound on the Red Planet.

Unclear late Thursday was whether the president will set out any proposed changes in the hierarchy for space exploration -- a shift that some are pushing within the administration -- to allow NASA and the Defense Department to swap more information and technology.

Sources familiar with the policy, which is similar to a proposal made by Bush's father almost 15 years ago, was developed by a team overseen by Vice President Dick Cheney. Administration officials see the initiative as a vital national security measure that would lead to development of new technologies and potential new sources of energy.

The president's announcement, which is tentatively scheduled for the middle of next week after his return from the Summit of the Americas in Mexico, will call for exploring multiple destinations, with the lunar outpost being a possible first step.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush in Florida that the president would make an announcement about space next week, but he declined to give details.

Last summer, the president ordered a top-to-bottom "review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future direction of the program, and the president will have more to say on it next week," McClellan said.

Bush has been expected to announce a major space initiative, and some had speculated that he would do so at the 100th-anniversary celebration of the Wright brothers' first flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he only pledged to keep the United States at the forefront of world aviation.

Under Bush's proposal, astronauts would return to the moon by 2013 to test spacecraft and equipment for further exploration in deep space, including manned missions to initially orbit Mars, land and be able to return.

The last manned mission to the moon was in 1972. A total of 12 Americans walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972.

The nation's space shuttle fleet, the backbone of NASA's manned space program, is designed only for near-Earth orbit and for ferrying equipment, supplies and crew members between Earth and the space station.

When NASA's shuttle fleet resumes missions, possibly as soon as September, the three remaining orbiters would be used to finish station assembly. By 2016, after finishing research on the human response to long-duration spaceflight, NASA's role in the station would diminish, shifting the burden for maintaining the orbiting space lab to the Russians, Europeans and Japanese.

According to an account that will be published in Aviation Week & Space Technology, the White House will drop plans for a reusable orbital space plane. Congress has failed to embrace the space plane, which NASA began to pursue about three years ago.

The nation's space agency already has plans on the books for sending unmanned missions from Earth to the icy moons of Jupiter and to return to Mars with another robotic mission capable of returning to Earth with soil and rock samples.

Last Saturday, a six-wheeled robot developed by NASA landed on Mars and began sending back images of the planet.

The vehicle, called the Spirit, eventually is to begin moving about the planet, sampling the soil and rocks. A second rover is due to land on Mars on Jan. 24.

The last president to propose a manned mission to Mars was Bush's father, former President Bush, who in 1989 said Americans should lead the way "back to the moon, back to the future, and this time to stay."

When he outlined his proposal on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, then-President Bush said the next step would be "a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars."

At the time, the estimated cost was between $400 billion and $500 billion, a price tag too high for Congress, which scuttled the proposal.

Similar obstacles confront any plan that the current president might propose. Faced with a budget deficit that is expected to top $500 billion this year alone.

Bush's proposal, if it wins support in Congress, will be a significant realignment of the nation's space program, which for the last decade has seen no growth in its budget at a time when it has been trying to keep the aging shuttle fleet aloft and build a space station that has consistently run over budget.

Glenn Mahone, a spokesman for NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, said the president "is certainly committed to America's space program and to the cause of exploration." Mahone declined to discuss details of Bush's plan.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others in Congress, has called for an expansion of the U.S. space program, including a return to the moon.

Apollo 11, which landed on the moon in July 1969, was the first of six to successfully make lunar landings. The others were missions 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17, which made the last landing in December 1972.

UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions

By FRANK SIETZEN JR. AND KEITH L. COWING, United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- American astronauts will return to the moon early in the next decade in preparation for sending crews to explore Mars and nearby asteroids, President Bush is expected to propose next week as part of a sweeping reform of the U.S. space program.

To pay for the new effort -- which would require a new generation of spacecraft but use Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules in the interim -- NASA's space shuttle fleet would be retired as soon as construction of the International Space Station is completed, senior administration sources told United Press International.

The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago. It commits the United States to an aggressive and far-reaching mission that holds interplanetary space as the human race's new frontier.

Sources said Bush's impending announcement climaxes an unprecedented review of NASA and of America's civilian space goals -- manned and robotic. The review has been proceeding for nearly a year, involving closed-door meetings under the supervision of Vice President Dick Cheney, sources said. The administration examined a wide range of ideas, including new, reusable space shuttles and even exotic concepts such as space elevators.

To begin the initiative, the president will ask Congress for a down payment of $800 million for fiscal year 2005, most of which will go to develop new robotic space vehicles and begin work on advanced human exploration systems. Bush also plans to ask Congress to boost NASA's budget by 5 percent annually over at least the next five years, with all of the increase supporting space exploration. With the exception of the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, no other agency is expected to receive a budget increase above inflation in FY 2005.

Along with retiring the shuttle fleet, the new plan calls for NASA to convert a planned follow-on spacecraft -- called the orbital space plane -- into versions of a new spaceship called the crew exploration vehicle. NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station project about the same time the moon landings would begin -- beginning in 2013, according to an administration timetable shown to UPI.

The first test flights of unmanned prototypes of the CEV could occur as soon as 2007. An orbital version would replace the shuttle to transport astronauts to and from the space station. However, sources said, the current timetable leaves a period several years when NASA would lack manned space capability -- hence the need to use Soyuz vehicles for flights to the station. Ariane rockets also might be used to launch lunar missions.

During the remainder of its participation in space station activities, NASA's research would be redirected to sustaining humans in space. Other research programs not involving humans would be terminated or curtailed.

The various models of the CEV would be 21st century versions of the 1960s Apollo spacecraft. When they become operational, they would be able to conduct various missions in Earth orbit, travel to and land on the moon, send astronauts to rendezvous with nearby asteroids, and eventually serve as part of a series of manned missions to Mars.

Under the current plan, sources said, the first lunar landings would carry only enough resources to test advanced equipment that would be employed on voyages beyond the moon. Because the early moon missions would use existing rockets, they could deliver only small equipment packages. So the initial, return-to-the-moon missions essentially would begin where the Apollo landings left off -- a few days at a time, growing gradually longer. The human landings could be both preceded and accompanied by robotic vehicles.

The first manned Mars expeditions would attempt to orbit the red planet in advance of landings -- much as Apollo 8 and 10 orbited the moon but did not land. The orbital flights would conduct photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface before sending landing craft, said sources familiar with the plan's details.

Along with new spacecraft, NASA would develop other equipment needed to allow humans to explore other worlds, including advanced spacesuits, roving vehicles and life support equipment.

As part of its new space package, sources said, the administration will convene an unusual presidential commission to review NASA's plans as they unfold. The group would consider such factors as the design of the spacecraft; the procedure for assembly, either in Earth orbit or lunar orbit; the individual elements the new craft should contain, such as capsules, supply modules, landing vehicles and propellant stages, and the duration and number of missions and size of crews.

Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort. Further details about the plan and the space agency's revised budget will be announced in NASA briefings next week and when the president delivers his FY 2005 budget to Congress.

--

Frank Sietzen Jr. covers aerospace issues for UPI Science News. Keith L. Cowing is editor of NASAWatch.com and SpaceRef.com. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com

Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.

January 7, 2003 - Moon call goes out to scientists By Richard Black BBC science correspondent, in Chandigarh [Full text] The Indian President, Doctor A P J Abdul Kalam, has issued an invitation to scientists to put their experiments on the country's first Moon mission.

The Chandrayaan Mission, as it is known, will be an unmanned probe and is scheduled for launch in 2007 or 2008.

Commentators say there is now a space race of sorts in Asia with several countries in the region keen to exploit new rocket and satellite technologies.

The president was speaking at the Indian Science Congress in Chandigarh.

Mission objectives

China made the world sit up when it put a man in orbit in October last year.

The Indian nation, too, hopes to impress when it launches a half-tonne craft on an Indian-built rocket towards a lunar orbit.

The mission has a political purpose in demonstrating the technological achievements of a developing nation. But not all of the scientific objectives have been decided.

Dr Kalam, a distinguished former scientist himself, said it was now up to Indian researchers to come forward with ideas.

"The exploration of the Moon through Chandrayaan will electrify the entire country, particularly young scientists and children," he said.

"Since you are all scientists, I want to convey to you... any scientist who wants to do that research on the Moon or wants to research the Moon environment, we'll support them to do the research," he told the congress here in Chandigarh.

Water security

The Chandrayaan Mission will contribute more to Indian pride and Indian technology than to human progress.

But the majority of Dr Kalam's speech urged scientists to work for the good of the developing world and, in particular, to help India attain its declared goal of becoming a developed country by the year 2020.

Agricultural yields must double in 10 years, he said; an Aids vaccine also had to be developed and proven for use. Dr Kalam also spoke of the need for greater water security through the interlinking of rivers and the building of desalination plants.

And he talked about developing a nuclear reactor that could exploit India's vast reserves of thorium.

In the West, political figures of Dr Kalam's stature almost never attend these science gatherings; even those national leaders such as Margaret Thatcher who had a background in science.

That he did come perhaps indicates the developing world's greater need for science and a greater awareness of the advances it can bring. [End]

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