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Bush to Announce Missions to Mars, Moon

Posted on: Thursday, 8 January 2004, 06:00 CST

President Bush will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and back to the moon and to establish a long-term human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night.

Bush won't propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon; rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now, one official said.

The president also wants to build a permanent space station on the moon.

Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush's announcement would come in the middle of next week.

Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.

Many insiders had speculated he might set forth goals at the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' famed flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he said only that America would continue to lead the world in aviation.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others, has called for an expansion of the U.S. space program, including a return to the moon. The United States put 12 men on the moon between 1969 through 1972.

An interagency task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney has been considering options for a space mission since summer.

Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has said that before deciding to race off to the moon or Mars, the nation needs to complete the international space station and provide the taxi service to accommodate a full crew of six or seven. The station currently houses two.

At the same time, Glenn has said, NASA could be laying out a long-term plan, setting a loose timetable and investing in the engineering challenges of sending people to Mars. The only sensible reason for going to the moon first, he says, would be to test the technology for a Mars trip.

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