Mars braces for impacts

Artist’s impression of ESA’s ExoMars rover / ESA

Stay calm, Mars isn’t going to be hit by an asteroid on January 30th as feared, so say astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.

In fact, Mars is more at risk from a peppering of spacecraft containing human visitors – with Russia’s latest claim being that they’re going to beat everyone to the red planet (Interfax).

The single source for the story is a Russian academic, Lev Zelyony, who reckons that Russia’s vast experience in manned space flight will allow a Russian to step onto Mars by 2025 at the latest. That’s a full 12 years ahead of America’s current estimate, 2037. Given the European Space Agency has plans to get humans on Mars by 2030 it’s going to get crowded up there.

Zelyony appears to be upset that Russia lost the moon race, and doesn’t want to see the same thing happen with Mars.

No official statement from the Russian government seems to be available to corroborate these claims. But we have been told how much Russia’s fake Mars habitat experiment will cost - $15 million. The Mars500 experiment will see six people encapsulated for 520 days to see how they cope with the stresses of isolation. For the privilege, volunteers will be paid 50,000 Euros. Maybe I’m just tight-fisted, but that doesn’t sound like very much for almost two years of a life.

Daniel Cressey

Nature.com, 11.01. 2008
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/01/mars_braces_for_impacts.html