When will humans travel to Mars and revisit the Moon?
A firm timetable for human missions to Mars doesn’t exist yet. However, in 2004, President Bush outlined a vision to establish a lunar outpost by 2020 as a preliminary step for exploration beyond Earth, including Mars. Preliminary plans for lunar outpost missions are to be finalized by 2012. Precursor missions that would help develop the needed technology during the 2010-2020 decade were tentatively outlined by Adringa and others. On Sep 24 2007, Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator, hinted that NASA may be able to launch a human mission to Mars by 2037. The current plan is to withdraw $11 billion from space science missions to fund the vision for human exploration. The European Space Agency is also planning human missions to Mars under its Aurora program. Russia has been collaborating with the ESA in this effort, the most recent being an investigation of the psychological and physical effects of prolonged isolation from Earth. A human mission to Mars is expected to take about eight
