Republican Congress Are Not Impressed With NASA’s First Steps Toward Human Exploration on Mars
Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASAUSAToday reported today that Texas Republican Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Space and Technology Committee, called NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission, “uninspiring… unjustified and “just a time-wasting distraction.”
NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission is a stepping stone to NASA’s plan for human exploration. The organization plans to use the mission to advance technology and spaceflight experience needed for a human mission to Mars in the 2030’s. The purpose of the mission is to collect a boulder from a large multi-ton asteroid near Earth and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon. NASA will then explore the orbiting asteroid, and return to Earth with samples in the 2020s.
Congressional Republicans believe that NASA should focus on the moon as a stepping stone to Mars exploration rather than the asteroid.