Are manned missions needed to explore Mars and beyond?
PARIS (AFP) — The United States has pledged to colonize the Moon by 2020 and send astronauts to Mars, but many scientists say dangerous and costly manned space missions should be a thing of the past, not the future. Intelligent robots and satellites such as those already exploring the Red Planet, they say, do a good job and are a lot less fragile than human organisms too easily stranded millions of miles from home. The scientific tug of war over the merits of sending humans into deep space is at least as old as Sputnik, the 83.5 kilo (184 pound) sphere of aluminum crammed with two radio transmitters — the world’s first satellite — that Russia lobbed into orbit 50 years ago on October 4. Russian leaders did not foresee the frenzied response Sputnik would…
