Lunar Pioneer Targets The Red Planet

17 May Lunar Pioneer Targets The Red Planet

Buzz Aldrin agrees with President Barack Obama that America should not focus its resources on sending more people to the moon. Like the U.S. leader, the veteran astronaut has a more ambitious target in mind: Mars.

Aldrin, 80, knows a thing or two about space travel. In 1969, he was a pilot on the first manned lunar landing and became the second person to walk on the moon after Apollo 11 crewmate Neil Armstrong. So when the former astronaut talks about the future of America’s space program, people listen. Aldrin told The Nikkei he wants the president to declare a two-phase initiative for sending a manned mission to Mars. As he sees it, the first phase would end in July 2019, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. He sees the second phase culminating in a Mars landing in 2035.

“If the president chooses not to embark on that historical initiative, the next president who replaces him in 2013 or 2017 will be very strongly encouraged by me and many others to go down in history himself,” Aldrin said.

Displaying a keen sense of history, Aldrin points out that Apollo 11 landed on the moon 66 years after the Wright Brothers pioneered flight, and that a 2035 Mars landing would come 66 years after the first moon mission. While still enthusiastic about America’s role in promoting lunar development, Aldrin says he sees the country playing more of a supporting role in helping other governments — such as India, China, Japan and Europe — with their ambitions to reach the moon.

“There are a lot of things we can do to support other countries cooperatively, hopefully, going to the moon,” Aldrin said.

In return for America’s cooperation, those governments would lend their technological support to help the U.S. in its push to reach the Red Planet, Aldrin says. For example, he envisions partner governments helping the U.S. develop orbital refueling depots that could be used to service spacecraft traveling beyond the moon, as well as those
headed for the moon or returning to earth. Aldrin says the widely held view that NASA’s budget has been cut is not true, and that to keep America’s space program vital, the country needs an objective to aim for. As a smaller-scale goal, Aldrin cites his hope that the HL-20, a U.S. spacecraft currently under development, will soon replace the Soyuz for ferrying people to the International Space Station, which is expected to remain in operation until 2020. The HL-20 “has been studied for eight years and (received) 800 million dollars … the largest amount from NASA for the Commercial Crew Development program.”

— Compiled from an interview by Nikkei staff writer Ryu Osumi