A Big NASA Moon To Mars Pivot – Next Year?
Keith’s note: According to “NASA, in surprise shift, may launch rockets to Mars next year” in Politico: “We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test technologies that will land humans on Mars,” said NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens. The White House first hinted at the possibility last month in a press release after a meeting between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and President Donald Trump. It indicated the U.S. and Italy would partner on a Mars mission as soon as next year. NASA employees who would usually know about such plans were not informed about the Mars effort prior to the White House meeting, according to a senior official, who was granted anonymity to speak about internal matters.”
6 responses to “A Big NASA Moon To Mars Pivot – Next Year?”
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I’m sure it will be a great PR stunt and cost billions of dollars, but contribute nothing to our long term human spaceflight goals to send humans to Mars and return them safely to Earth in good health. It will be all about appearances.
Well then, I would highly advise against RIF’ing any of your Scientists, Technicians, and Engineers. That will be the talent you’ll need to support such an endeavor.
This prioritizing Mars over the moon will kill Artemis much like what killed VSE, SEI, and every program that failed to get humans beyond LEO (whenever the moon mentioned, Mars is in same sentence). With layoffs and proposed cuts puts our moon program in what Soviets had in 1960s (which it has been for years): We either go to the moon or we do not. Right now we are doing neither.
“We are evaluating every opportunity, including launch windows in 2026 and 2028, to test technologies that will land humans on Mars,”
I wonder if this is really the NASA and DARPA Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) project, which aims to test a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space, possibly as early as late 2026.
On the pro side, doing Moon again was always a time and resource drain on an effort to go to Mars. Been there, done that, we know how old the Moon is and we have some samples of early Earth eject to better tease out Earth early history. (We could have more, but robotic missions can collect that.)
On the con side, this is another renege on an international and important effort to return Mars samples. Not a sunk cost fallacy, a robotic return would guarantee good, non-contaminated samples faster, it is a good investment to do both.
We are at least 10 yrs from Mars. The Moon is 3 days away and an ideal place to test this like closed loop ECLSS, radiation shielding, precision landing, and other things we need to get to Mars.
Landing humans on Mars in 2026 or even 2028 is probably a one way trip. And it won’t end well.