Nasa lays out vision for manned mission to Mars – as it happened

Nasa gives a press conference to discuss the potential of a manned mission to Mars. Follow live updates here




 10.43am ET

Summary

We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage of Nasa's conference on Mars. Here's a summary of where things stand:
• Nasa called for full funding for its Mars mission to put humans on the red planet in the 2030s. That means $821m for FY 2014, out of a provisional Nasa budget (in the president's proposal) of $17.7bn.
• Nasa defended its mission to capture an asteroid as the fastest way to build on current space exploration experience and to advance toward the goal of a Mars landing. But the sense in the room is that the asteroid mission could be a distraction or detour.
• To go to Mars, Nasa must establish infrastructure including reliable life support, communications and navigation systems. Astronauts must also figure out how to lift off from the red planet after an extended stay. Fuel storage is another concern.
The technology to build and maintain all those systems is currently in place, tech director Michael Gazarik said, but more practical experience is needed.

10.29am ET

The panel is wrapped.

10.28am ET

Grunsfeld, the veteran of five shuttle missions, articulates the daring spirit that motivates the Mars mission:
"When people who left on the Oregon trail from St. Louis, they new that only a fraction of them would make it to the West coast," Grunsfeld says. "But they went anyway."

10.19am ET

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Charles Bolden delivers remarks at the opening of the "Human 2 Mars Summit" at George Washington University in Washington, DC, May 6, 2013. AFP PHOTO/JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

 

10.18am ET

The panel is now taking questions. First question: this forum is supposed to be about Mars, but we keep talking about asteroids.
Why the heck are we going to an asteroid?
Gerstenmaier says the president told Nasa to do it in 2010, so they started working on it. He insists that it'll help Nasa with the Mars mission and other prospective manned missions to outer space.

10.13am ET

Leone moves the discussion to what infrastructure needs to be in place "at or on Mars" for people to go there?
"What's the scout survival package for a 2030 Mars landing?" he says.
Gerstenmaier says that with the rover program, there's already a communications system in place, and that would need to be maintained.
Other items on the wish list: laser communications; autonomy of operations for when the sun is between the Earth and Mars for a couple weeks each year; propellent generation off the surface / resource utilization; and other unspecified items.
Gazarik mentions some needs that seem like they should be up high on the list: "Life support systems that are reliable. Communications, navigation. Technology to get back off the planet."
Gazarik says Nasa is working on a system for the cryogenic freezing and storage of fuel. He says the Mars rover weighed a metric ton, and that's as big as Nasa can go right now. But the manned craft could weigh 40 metric tons.

Updated at 10.14am ET

10.05am ET

Now Gerstenmaier echoes Grunsfeld. The point of the asteroid mission, he says, is not the asteroid.
"You need an object you can go to," Gerstenmaier says.
"If I want to advance the capabilities as fast as I can... this mission allows us to do that. It allows us to advance our knowledge.. so that we're ready to move to Mars.
"It's not so much about returning the asteroid per se to be examined."

10.01am ET

The justification for the asteroid mission Grunsfeld has just described seems to contradict the version Nasa director Bolden gave last month, when details of the mission first emerged.
Grunsfeld said it's not about running experiments on the asteroid. The point is to figure out how to fly out to one and link up with it.
Last month Bolden said the mission would lead to scientific discoveries and help protect Earth: "This mission represents an unprecedented technological feat that will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities and help protect our home planet," he said.
The impression from today's panel is that the asteroid mission is not about running science experiments.

9.52am ET

Leone asks about experiments on the asteroid that scientists hope to run.
John Grunsfeld says the asteroid mission is not "science-driven." Chunks of asteroids fall to Earth all the time, he says. We don't need to travel into space to get them.
The asteroid outing is more a technology mission, Grunsfeld says, to learn about human space flight into deep space.

Updated at 9.53am ET

9.47am ET

To pull off the asteroid mission Nasa needs a high-powered solar-electric propulsion capability, Michael Gazarik, the director of space technology, says. He means that the spacecraft that will capture the asteroid must be able to maneuver in space by running on solar power.
William H. Gerstenmaier, director of human operations, lays out another challenge: it's difficult to pull off docking and rendezvous missions in outer space, as opposed to low-Earth orbit.
Joining up with an asteroid could provide valuable lessons in conducting a manned mission to Mars, Gerstenmaier says.

9.37am ET

Here's an animation produced by Nasa explaining its mission to capture an asteroid:

Link 


 

9.36am ET

A group of Nasa directors discusses the agency's much-ballyhooed plan to capture an asteroid and then mine it for research.
Dan Leone, Nasa reporter for Space News, is moderating. The panel includes William H. Gerstenmaier, director of human exploration and operations; John Grunsfeld, a 5-time shuttle astronaut and director of the Nasa science mission; and Michael Gazarik, director of space technology.

9.29am ET

This sounds interesting:
"We're well on the way, we think, to developing a capability for cryogenic storage," Bolden says. "We're not there yet."
To listen to Nasa's strategic planners talk, all the best scenes from your favorite sci-fi movies are on the way to coming true.
Except they have to find a way to pay for it.

9.22am ET

Bolden takes a question about politics: What if the next administration cuts Nasa funding?
Bolden basically says Nasa has kept its missions so modest and scrappy that they should have a good chance of retaining sufficient funding.
"The programs you've seen us bring forward, whether it's a commercial crew, an asteroid strategy, a mission to Mars - they're realistic, they're very realistic," he says.
Commercial crew means Nasa "is out of the business of operating spacecraft into low-Earth orbit," Bolden says. "We award contracts and one or more industry partners provide transportation."
He doesn't say how much money Nasa would expect to save by hiring private companies to fly missions instead of flying them themselves.

Updated at 9.38am ET

9.15am ET

Bolden is asked whether Mars 1 would succeed in its mission to colonize the planet by 2023?
"I don't know," he says. "I don't know what their plan is."
"The Mars strategy that we have in place ... will have humans at least with Nasa in the Martian environment in the mid-2030s.

9.13am ET

That didn't take long: Bolden is already talking about the need to meet President Obama's budget requests in order to keep NASA healthy.
Bolden says that the first requirement of a Mars mission is to ensure that the United States can continue to send humans into space through 2017.
He calls for the full funding of the president's budget requests, which amounts to $821m for the next fiscal year for the Mars mission (not the whole of Nasa).

Updated at 10.33am ET

9.08am ET

General Bolden is speaking - you can watch on CSPAN here.
Curiosity is running experiments that could enable a manned mission to Mars, Bolden says.
He is not focusing on Curiosity but ranging broadly across NASA's vision for future Mars exploration.

8.47am ET

Good morning and welcome to our live blog coverage of Nasa's announcement this morning about the progress of its mission to Mars.
This morning the director of NASA, Gen. Charles Bolden, will discuss the possibility of a manned mission to Mars. The space agency currently is pursuing a long-term mission to take humans to Mars by the 2030s.
Following a keynote speech by Bolden, three panels will address current missions and emerging science.
The rover Curiosity touched down on the red planet about seven months ago and since then has been doing the usual tourist things: wandering aimlessly, shooting photos and  bitching about the exchange rate encountering unexpected tech glitches.
Curiosity has traveled about 500m since its successful landing. Last month it completed a mission to drill a hole into and sample a Martian rock, which scientists say provided new evidence that the planet has lost much of its original atmosphere. Here's a video explainer of that mission:

The Curiosity mission has generated unexpected publicity. One of the engineers on the project, Bobak Ferdowsi, who's entertaining on Twitter, engendered one of the better internet memes and was invited to sit next to the first lady at the state of the union address.
One question we're hoping scientists answer this morning: who was driving the rover the day this happened?

Updated at 9.17am ET

Tom McCarthy

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