Washington - US President Barack Obama on Thursday defended his plans for the future of human spaceflight, pledging to send astronauts into deep space by 2025.
"A landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around to see it," he said in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Astronauts could reach Mars by the mid-2030s after earlier missions to other deep space destinations.
His plans include work to begin on a heavy lift vehicle that could carry astronauts outside of low-Earth orbit to a series of destinations such as asteroids seen as a stepping stones for a mission to Mars, the White House said. Humans have not left low-Earth orbit since the moon missions of the 1970s.
His speech comes at a critical moment as NASA prepares for the retirement of the space shuttle program later this year. One shuttle is currently in orbit and just three more flights remain once it returns home. The retirement of the shuttle fleet will leave Russian Soyuz capsules as the only means to get humans into orbit.
Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/318968,extra-obama-astronauts-to-deep-space-by-2025.html.
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