Since the Apollo program ended nearly 50 years ago, every newly elected president of the United States has been annoyed by the same question: where to send astronauts?
NASA’s current target is the moon, but the moon belongs to a previous generation of American pioneers. A larger and more appropriate ambition for the space program that first landed humans on another celestial body is Mars, a destination that NASA has been preparing to reach since the days of its first visionaries. Now it’s time to realize your dream.
The Artemis program is today NASA’s centerpiece for human spaceflight. Its goal is to put astronauts on the lunar surface by 2024, but the outlook for that date is bleak. There is still no well-defined mission plan and work on the Artemis rocket and capsule is lagging behind and exceeding the budget.
When it comes to sending astronauts to Mars, NASA has somehow always been a captivating couple of decades of sending astronauts to Mars, thanks to the changing priorities of successive presidents. Think of the changes since 1988, when George HW Bush pushed back to the moon, to follow a mission to Mars. Bill Clinton canceled the lunar plane (to say nothing of Mars) and embraced the International Space Station. George W. Bush revived the moon-Mars sequence. Barack Obama removed the moon part from the program, saying NASA had been “there, he had done it” and opted for an asteroid mission and then for Mars. Donald Trump rejected Mars’ plan and chose to reach the moon with Artemis, but NASA still says Mars is on its agenda.