U.S. Should Prepare for Mars With Asteroid Flight, Panel Says

By Jeff Bliss

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. astronauts should travel to asteroids and other “deep space” destinations in preparation for a mission to Mars rather than fly directly to the planet, members of a presidential panel said yesterday.

A flight to Mars, which has been urged by some former astronauts and spaceflight advocates, would be too costly and dangerous, panel members said during a public meeting in Washington.

“Technically, economically and in terms of the rewards it produces” deep space is “a reasonable step on the way to Mars,” Norman Augustine, chairman of the committee, told reporters after the meeting. A direct-to-Mars flight “would likely not succeed.”

The meeting was the panel’s last public one as it prepares a report with recommendations for President Barack Obama on the space program’s future that is due at the end of this month. Augustine said the committee will give White House officials a preliminary briefing on its findings tomorrow.

The committee is focused on four choices, including the deep-space option, a plan that would end U.S. participation in the International Space Station by 2016 and another that would extend U.S. station efforts to 2020. The fourth calls for prolonging the space shuttle program past the current 2010 retirement date.

Current budget and future funding estimates for NASA won’t pay for humans to explore space, said former astronaut Sally Ride, a panel member and the first American woman in space. She said that the administration’s plan to return to the moon by 2020 would require more money than is now budgeted.

Not Viable

“Exploration really doesn’t look viable under 2010 budget” projections for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, she told her colleagues in Washington after guiding them through a series of cost forecasts for options that include returning to the moon or heading to Mars.

The “most cost effective” scenario is a plan to visit asteroids and potential sites for future spacecraft fuel depots and fly over Mars, Ride said. That approach would leave surface exploration of Mars for now to the robotic rovers and orbiters that have been studying the planet.

Ride said the fly-by approach would offer a potential “off-ramp” to the Martian surface when more advanced technology is developed for a human mission.

The commission, led by former Lockheed Martin Corp. chief executive officer Norman Augustine, signaled that the “Mars first” option was likely too costly and ambitious to undertake.

Deep-Space Option

The deep-space scenario leading to human lunar return by 2030 -- a decade later than envisioned now -- would start with a trip to Lagrange points in 2023 and an asteroid by 2027. Lagrange points are where the gravitational pull of the Earth and the sun balance out and allow an object such as a satellite to maintain a stable position. One of the points is almost 1 million miles from Earth, four times farther than the moon.

Mars is about 35 million miles from Earth at its closest point.

In a presentation, Ride showed a deep-space scenario where astronauts could fly over Mars by 2034 with a budget that’s $3 billion more annually than current projections. Another option that would use shuttle technology envisions using trips to asteroids and other deep-space destinations in preparation for a return to the moon in 2030. Other deep-space options would use NASA and commercially produced rockets.

Ride, while not providing specific figures, said the option of flying directly to Mars would have “quite a bit higher” cost than the other scenarios.

Panel members said they are in general agreement that companies should be relied upon to ferry astronauts and cargo to the Earth-orbiting space station.

“We’d like to get NASA out of the business” of flying people to lower Earth orbit, Ride said.

Also, the committee said it believes the U.S. will wait until 2011 to shut down the shuttle program. The workhorse spacecraft is set to be retired at the end of next year.