✨ We've just launched our NEW website design!

Learn More Here
News

NASA Can’t Afford its Planned Manned Mars Mission

NASA Can’t Afford its Planned Manned Mars Mission

Last year, US Congress issued a mandate for NASA to launch a manned Mars mission by 2039. Then, in March, that mandate became a bill which granted NASA $19.5 billion to fund humanity’s first voyage to the Red Planet. As much as $19.5 billion appears to be, though, it is not enough to achieve this lofty goal, according to NASA itself.

Failure to Land

The confession came during Wednesday’s propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. NASA’s William H. Gerstenmaier said (via Ars Technica):

“I can’t put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars. And that entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars.”

According to Gerstenmaier, NASA has enough resources to launch a Mars mission, but not enough to actually land it. As you can guess, that’s a bit of a problem.

NASA Can’t Afford its Planned Manned Mars Mission

Manned Mars Mission Mandate Mangled?

Does Gerstenmaier’s admission mean NASA’s human mission to Mars is off? Well, his comments to not constitute an official statement. Gerstenmaier expressed his opinion, and maybe that opinion is incorrect. However, a NASA official saying publicly that the administration can’t afford such a mission is to be taken seriously.

Related Articles

Back to top button
Close

Adblock Detected

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!   eTeknix prides itself on supplying the most accurate and informative PC and tech related news and reviews and this is made possible by advertisements but be rest assured that we will never serve pop ups, self playing audio ads or any form of ad that tracks your information as your data security is as important to us as it is to you.   If you want to help support us further you can over on our Patreon!   Thank you for visiting eTeknix