NASA Is Working on New Vision for Missions

After decades of watching astronauts circle Earth, space visionaries finally have reason for optimism: NASA and other agencies are working with the White House on a bold, new course of exploration.

Whether the destination is the moon or Mars -- or whether any plan actually makes liftoff -- remains to be seen. For space buffs, just to get a defined mission would be cause for hope.

“Put it this way: I think we have to continue to move forward and, at least with the discussion that’s going on, that’s good,” said Everett Gibson, a NASA scientist who studied moon rocks from the Apollo astronauts and the Mars meteorite that may hold evidence of past life on the Red Planet.

Gibson is currently involved with the European-built Mars probe that’s on its way to a Christmas Day landing. Two NASA rovers are right behind, scheduled to land on Mars in January.

Neither the White House nor NASA will discuss specifics. Nor will they answer the hopes of optimists who have been speculating for weeks that President Bush might use the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flight on Dec. 17 to make a space announcement.

They will only say the interagency effort began in July. “That work is ongoing and will continue,” said Glenn Mahone, NASA’s chief spokesman.

It was the Columbia tragedy that helped force a discussion of where NASA should venture beyond the space shuttle and international space station. The panel that investigated the Columbia accident called for a clearly defined long-term mission -- a national vision for space that has been missing for three decades.

Gibson sides with the humans-back-to-the-moon-then-on-to-Mars crowd.

“The moon can be used as a development ground to allow us to better operate on Mars,” Gibson said this week.

Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), a member of the House Science Committee, also favors a human return to the moon.

He said he made his views known last month to Vice President Dick Cheney, who is heading a task force on the future of spaceflight.