NASA Chief to Senators: We're Going to Mars
NASA chief Charles Bolden told senators Wednesday that sending astronauts to Mars is still the ultimate goal for U.S. human spaceflight, as he defended the agency's new space plan against criticism in a heated budget hearing.
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But NASA will likely not have the technology to send astronauts to Mars for at least the next 10 years, he said.
"There are too many capabilities that we don't have in our kit bag," Bolden said.
That's where the NASA's 2011 budget request comes in, Bolden said. It sets the stage for future manned spaceflights to the moon, asteroids and Mars, by focusing on the technologies needed to explore beyond low-Earth orbit faster, he added.
But Bolden's comments were met with criticism and, at times, open hostility from some committee members and experts because the new budget request effectively canceled NASA's Constellation program, which was building new rockets and spaceships capable of returning astronauts to the moon.
Without a successor to the space shuttle, NASA will lose talented engineers from layoffs and attrition, which poses a threat to the United States' prowess in human spaceflight, former shuttle commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson told the committee as part of a later hearing with a panel of space experts.
"With the retirement of the space shuttle later this year, and if the administration's proposal is followed, the United States will no longer be a space-faring nation," said Gibson, who flew on five shuttle missions before retiring from spaceflight in 1996.
