Space experts fear that the United States will not reach Mars by 2030

The United States promised to send the first humans to Mars by the 2030s here, but space experts and lawmakers have expressed concern that planning and scheduling. lack of funds delays these plans

. Americans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, building a lunar bridge to test the technology and spacecraft that will transport humans to Mars.

At a hearing in Washington, Sen. Bill Nelson said that the White House's decision to return to the moon – a program that former President Barack Obama has halted to focus on Mars – could slow down the process. "We do not want to deprive NASA's budget of what is the goal, and the goal is to reach Mars with humans," said Nelson, a Florida Democrat, who is home to Cape Canaveral. and Kennedy Space Center. [19659002] "Do these missions help us reach our goal of bringing humans to Mars?" He asked. In 2009, an independent panel of experts known as the Augustine Commission warned that NASA's resources were not meeting its ambitious goals. With an annual budget of about $ 18 billion, NASA would need $ 3 billion more per year to get to Mars, she discovered.

NASA officials said less, using only increases based on inflation in the budget. And National Academies of Science have calculated that if NASA's budget continued on its current path, "forget the scenario of arriving in March in the 2030s. It would take us until 2050," added Nelson. "I do not think we want to wait that long."

– Global Partners Concerned –

In 2017, NASA's draft authorization required NASA to define and provide Congress with a step-by-step plan to reach Mars. "We do not have this road map yet, it is seven months late," Nelson said. Let's see the program to go to Mars and see where all this is. "

Testifying at the hearing, Chris Carberry, executive director of Explore Mars, said that international and private partnerships could help the United States make it more affordable to reach Mars "Our international partners want us to lead," he told lawmakers. "But they have concerns that we will continue to change direction, they are not sure we will follow the direction."

More so, aerospace experts have identified a dozen technologies that "we must start working immediately if we hope to land humans on Mars in the 2030s," added Carberry. These include the development of spaceships that can survive difficult entry on Mars and land softly, as well as the ability to take people out of the surface and return to Earth. "Some will take a while to reach," says Carberry. Renting bipartisan support to NASA, he sees among legislators, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican who heads the Senate subcommittee on space, said he hopes the next draft of NASA's congressional law "This next NASA clearance, the hope is that it will go further and be more daring in its aspirations," he said. Cruz then asked Peggy Whitson, NASA's retired astronaut, who has spent a 665-day American A record in space, for his views on what is needed for the future.

"The most important thing is the consistency of objectives," she replied. We must have a budget line that will support the goals and objectives we are trying to achieve. "