U.S. and Soviets May Stage Joint Mars Mission

The Soviet Union has apparently withdrawn its objection to a new U.S.-Soviet space cooperation agreement, a move that could pave the way for a joint project to gather samples from the surface of Mars with a U.S. spacecraft and to return the material in a Soviet rocket, several U.S. officials said Thursday.

Considerable diplomatic as well as scientific work remains to be done, the officials cautioned, but a broad new U.S.-Soviet agreement on peaceful space ventures could be signed at the next summit meeting of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. That meeting is expected to occur here in November or December.

Raold Z. Sagdeev, director of the space research institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, has told several U.S. government and university scientists that Moscow no longer insists on an end to the Reagan Administration’s space defense program--the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars”--before concluding a new government-to-government agreement to resume peaceful space cooperation.

Earlier Accord Lapsed

An earlier bilateral agreement on space, which fostered projects such as the linkup of the manned U.S. Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1975, was allowed to lapse by the United States after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

In preparation for the Reagan-Gorbachev summit last November, the United States expressed interest in reviving the agreement, which can allow governmental and semi-governmental projects. The Soviets rejected the overture on the grounds that the SDI defense project was violating the peaceful nature of space.

In March, however, Sagdeev described the Kremlin’s new position to Burton I. Edelson, director of space science and applications for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, during Edelson’s visit to Moscow in connection with Halley’s Comet events. Sagdeev said specifically that the SDI no longer is linked to peaceful space issues, according to Edelson.

About the same time, the Soviets separated the SDI from negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. And they subsequently have dropped their insistence that the initiative be banned before considering a new strategic arms agreement.

U.S. officials, who said Sagdeev and other Soviet scientists have repeated the new Soviet position to several U.S. scientists, are seeking official Soviet confirmation through diplomatic channels in hopes of developing a new space agreement for the summit. “We’re still interested in it if they are,” a senior official who requested anonymity said.

In 1996 or Later

“We would like to work with the Russians on an unmanned Mars landing mission, as well as in other areas, such as space biology and plasma physics,” Edelson said this week. He and others have indicated that the joint mission to gather samples from Mars’ surface could occur in 1996 or later. However, they did not elaborate on the roles each nation would have on the mission.

NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher went even further at a special conference on Mars here this week, saying that manned exploration of that planet in the next century could be a cooperative effort involving many countries, including the United States and Soviet Union.

“Mars, the ancients’ god of war, could become a symbol of productive international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space,” Fletcher said at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences commemorating the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Viking spacecraft landings on Mars.

17 Missions Thus Far

In all, the United States and Soviet Union have tried 17 times, not always successfully, to explore Mars. The so-called “Red Planet” has intrigued man since the dawn of civilization, its “canals” providing the stuff of countless early science fiction novels.

What unmanned spacecraft sent there have found is a planet with a very thin atmosphere--its density one-hundredth that of Earth--with a few clouds and sparse icecaps at the poles. The surface includes fine, red dust, as well as vast canyons in the northern hemisphere and a heavily cratered southern hemisphere.

Many large channels traverse its surface, Fletcher said, “almost certainly cut by water hundreds of millions to billions of years ago.” Scientists suspect that water is buried underground. In tests for life forms, “though the results were tantalizing, they were inconclusive, and no evidence for Martian life was found,” he said.

Other Probes Set

The U.S. and Soviet space programs plan several new Mars missions in the next few years, well before any joint landing and recovery project, which could be coordinated under a new U.S.-Soviet agreement. These include a Soviet flight to a Martian moon, Phobos, in 1988 and a U.S. flight to put an “observer” orbiter around Mars in 1990.

“While there is no plan to do so now, the two missions present a possibility for mutually beneficial data and other exchanges,” Fletcher said, which “in turn could lead ultimately to a possible joint sample return mission.”

Beyond that, “human exploration of Mars has now moved from science fiction to serious consideration by a presidential commission,” he said.

Although human settlement on Mars is a desirable and achievable long-term goal, he said, such an enormous undertaking would involve the cooperative effort of the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as other nations.

According to the Planetary Society, a group headed by astronomer Carl Sagan to promote exploration, the cost of an unmanned Mars sample mission would be about $2.5 billion, including a rover vehicle. A manned Mars mission around the year 2010 would cost about $40 billion to $60 billion but still less than the U.S. Apollo moon landing project.