Sending humans to Mars is possible, but it will require NASA to team up with China, something that current U.S. law prohibits for the space agency, according to a congressionally mandated study issued this week.
The 285-page National Research Council report called "Pathways to Exploration -- Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration" is the result of a 18-month review of NASA's human spaceflight program to figure out whether the expense of the program can be sustained and is justified.
The report says that the space program has achieved a lot, but the U.S. government will have to change some things, like allowing international collaboration and increasing NASA's budget, if they want to make it to Mars anytime soon.
Congress required the report under NASA's fiscal 2010 authorization bill.
"The United States has been a leader in human space exploration for more than five decades, and our efforts in low-Earth orbit with our partners are approaching maturity with the completion of the International Space Station," Jonathan Lunine, director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University and co-chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement, according to a press release issued by The National Academies. "We as a nation must decide now how to embark on human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit in a sustainable fashion."
The National Research Council, a policy panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, looked into things like political support, funding requirements, and technologies required for deep space exploration to determine if manned spaceflight is feasible.
Currently, only the U.S., Russia and China are currently capable of manned spaceflight. Other countries, like India, are working on developing their own manned mission programs, and China is seen as having the greatest potential for manned space exploration, according to the release.
The U.S. considers China its space rival however, not a country it could team up with to put a man on Mars.
NASA is banned from cooperating with China on space missions under a 2011 federal law. The law says that the NASA can't "develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement or execute a bilateral policy, program, order or contract of any kind" that would make the two partners in space exploration.
NASA has already partnered with the French space agency to send a lander to Mars.
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