NASA Aims for Moon Base by 2010, Mars Trip by 2020

Taking President Bush’s charge to fly to Mars and the moon, NASA said today that American astronauts could establish a lunar base by the first decade of the 21st Century and go to the red planet 10 years later.

In an address to employees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, agency chief Richard Truly said, “We are very well poised with the proper support of the Congress to move out on such as program as this.”

On the 20th anniversary last Thursday of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, Bush proposed a return to the moon and a flight to Mars, but without setting a detailed timetable.

Housing 4 Astronauts

Joining Truly, NASA Associate Administrator Frank Martin said a moon base housing four astronauts for up to 30 days could be built on the moon by the first decade of the 21st Century.

It would be followed by more sophisticated bases that could house 12 astronauts for a year, he said.

A flight to the red planet would be possible in the “second decade” of the next century and lead to permanent colonies on the planet, Martin said.

“I don’t think I have to tell everybody why we’d like to go to Mars,” he said. “It’s been something that has intrigued us for centuries. It’s scientifically exciting.

“There’s still a question whether or not there was once upon a time life on Mars, and from my whole view of this . . . there’s going to be and it’s going to be human life,” Martin said.

Truly, a former shuttle astronaut, drew a parallel with Bush’s more long-term approach to the stars and the Apollo missions to the moon in the 1970s.

“In a sense this is like Apollo because it is a leadership initiative and one that is going to take the very best of American spirit and know-how to do,” Truly said. “But it’s not like Apollo in another way, because if you read the President’s speech, what he said was a sustaining, continuing effort for the future.”