Rachel Courtland, space reporter
At last, a rough time line has emerged in the White House's new vision for space exploration: new spacecraft ready for deep space by 2025 and forays to Mars by the mid-2030s.
It has been more than two months since the White House
unveiled a new plan for NASA.
The proposal, which must still be approved by Congress, calls for scrapping NASA's Constellation programme, which aims take astronauts back to the moon using a pair of new rockets. NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said the new plan maintains the ultimate goal of Constellation, to take humans to Mars. But some critics have said that the lack of a defined time line for exploration will hobble the agency.
Now Obama has revealed more about the new vision in his first speech on the plan, delivered yesterday in Florida. By 2025, the US will have readied the first spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts beyond the moon and into deep space,
Associated Press reports. Trips to Mars, beginning with forays to Martian orbit and back, would begin in the mid-2030s. "I expect to be around to see it," Obama said.
Other details
matched those released by the White House this week in a preview of the speech. NASA will have until 2015 to finalise plans for a new heavy-lift vehicle that can carry crew capsules and supplies needed to reach deep space. And the Constellation programme's Orion capsule, which would have taken astronauts to low-Earth orbit and eventually the moon, will get new life as an escape pod for astronauts working on the International Space Station.
This decision may be beneficial with those with a stake in Orion's future, but economically impractical. Finishing Orion in its present form will take roughly $8 billion,
The New York Times says. The cost could be less, but still a few billion, for a simpler version of the capsule.
Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin tells the
Times:
"In the end, this seems like an expensive proposition that makes simply continuing to use the Russians for crew rescue look like a bargain."
The price for flights aboard Russia's three-person Soyuz capsule is currently about $50 million per astronaut.
A transcript and video of Obama's speech
can be found here.
