Advisors question NASA’s Moon and Mars timescales

August 14, 2009

Advisors question NASA's Moon and Mars timescales A panel charged with reviewing the United State’s space exploration plans is expected to tell White House officials today that its current timescales are unrealistic. The warnings could scupper plans to make a new lunar landing by 2020.

The 10-person Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee was set up in May. It is meeting with advisors to Barack Obama today to report on its conclusions.

Reports suggest the committee has calculated the only way the timescale is possible under the current budget is to abandon spending on the International Space Station. That unlikely option would entail de-orbiting the station in 2016 and crashing it into the South Pacific according to the Washington Post.

The panel is due to publish its findings next week after detailing them to officials this afternoon. The Guardian notes that the panel believes that even though no changes will make a 2020 landing feasible, even remaining within the current budget will require changes. These could include continuing to use existing shuttles past their scheduled 2015 retirement while searching for cheaper ways to replace them, or rethinking plans to miss out the idea of using the Moon as a stopping point.

So serious is the funding shortfall that one committee member is quoted by the Post as saying that even if the equipment for a lunar landing was ready right now, the fixed running costs are so high that the project would have to be scrapped.

The committee is also said to have concluded that under current budgets, a manned landing on Mars is simply inconceivable; at best astronauts could get near to one of the planet’s moons. However, committee chairman Norman Augustine has told fellow members that NASA should continue to place all plans in the context of a manned landing on the red planet being the ultimate goal.