DREAMS of a Mars landing may have to wait. No one is going there any time soon, according to leading space-agency figures on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite plans to land on the Red Planet from companies like SpaceX and Mars One, both the current head of NASA and the incoming head of the European Space Agency (ESA) say we鈥檒l be waiting decades for humans to walk on Martian soil.
鈥淣o commercial company without the support of NASA and government is going to get to Mars,鈥� NASA administrator Charles Bolden told a hearing of the US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in mid-April.
But NASA itself doesn鈥檛 have a firm date for landing 鈥� its loose and unfunded plan is for humans to touch down on Mars in the 2030s. The agency is planning to train for a deep-space mission by first visiting a small boulder plucked off a larger asteroid around 2025.
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Johann-Dietrich W枚rner, who is head of German space agency DLR and will become ESA director-general in July, thinks even these goals are ambitious. He told German newspaper Der Spiegel that it would be 鈥渧ery demanding鈥� to land on Mars before 2050 because of the difficulties of health, psychology and launching from Mars. If he鈥檚 right, children who watched the first moon landing in 1969 will be nearly 100 before they see a repeat on Mars.
聯Children who watched the first moon landing will be nearly 100 before they see a repeat on Mars聰
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲aiting for Mars鈥�
