President Barack Obama has apparently sped up his efforts to make the mission of humans on Mars a reality at the end of his Presidential term. He announced on Tuesday that NASA would continue to collaborate with private American companies to build habitats for human beings and to transport people to Mars efficiently for the colonisation to be effective.
Obama wrote for CNN in a post published Tuesday,
“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time I’m excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space. These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth — something we’ll need for the long journey to Mars.”
NASA has arranged a meeting with private aerospace groups to discuss future plans and ambitions, particularly concerned with speeding up the process of landing on Mars. Due to the concentrated efforts of Obama administration, USA now boasts more than 1,000 companies which are working on space-related initiatives, giving great promise and hope to the dream of conquering the Red Planet.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote a blog post on the agency’s website in which he reinvigorated their commitment towards the Mars mission and mentioned that already six companies have been commissioned to design and implement human habitats capable of supporting space life for extended periods.
This particular reaffirmation of NASA’s role in space exploration could also be a jab at Donald Trump, who argues that the government should step out of the way of funding NASA to favour private space enterprise. But a simple analysis of SpaceX’s great revenues will suggest that these are dependent mainly on NASA’s contracts, $4.2 billion worth of them to be exact. Private space companies heavily rely on federal investment through NASA to keep their operations going, and surely the industry will die out if the Government stops funding NASA.
In addition to this vigour, SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk also vowed in a conference last week that they are looking to land on Mars as soon as 2022.
Interesting times ahead!