Europe and Russia team up to be the first to put a man on Mars. OH HELL NO.
While the US has said that it’s hoping to have a person on Mars by 2030-ish, former rivals Russia and the European Space Agency have teamed up to try and beat America to the red planet. Looks like we’ve got ourselves an old fashioned space race!
Russian news outlet Ria Novosti is reporting that the European Space Agency (ESA), long the ally of Cold War champion NASA, is teaming with Russia on a joint manned mission to Mars, and that their crew will be the first to set foot on the Red Planet.
At a press briefing at an air show in Russia this week, ESA chief Jean-Jacques Dordain said the ESA and Roskosmos will “carry out the first flight to Mars together.” Apparently a major catalyst in this decision is the ongoing success of the Mars500 project, in which a six-member simulated crew is undergoing a 520-day isolation experiment simulating the long trip to and from Mars. Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems is heading Mars500–which “returns to Earth” in November–but the ESA is closely participating.
Dordain stopped short of declaring a timetable for such a mission, or on whose spacecraft the joint mission will ride. But he did set the stage for another epic, decades-long scientific struggle between two great world powers. So who will set foot on Mars first, the U.S. or Russia and its European partners?
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