The presence of artemic lunar surface will be determined by several factors, including the cost and safety of this transportation program and whether there are meaningful things for astronauts on the moon.
What about Mars?
There was some interesting language about Mars search in the thin budget: “By allocating more than 7 billion billion for lunar search and introducing a new investment of $ 1 billion for Mars -based programs, the budget ensures that America’s human space search efforts are unprecedented, innovative and effective.”
In fact, it was just an increase in the budget proposed by the Trump White House. So what does that mean?
No one is definitely saying, but this fund will probably offer a start for a strong Mars COTs program. It will start with Mars’ cargo missions. But eventually it will be extended to include staff’s missions, thus fulfilling Trump’s promise to remove humans on the Red Planet.
Is this a gift for Elon Musk? Critics will definitely cast it like this, and that is understandable. But the project will be open to any interest companies, and many. For example, the rocket lab already exists Expressed his interest Sending a cargo mission to Mars. Also a place of continuity, Said it is making a spacecraft To take the cargo to Mars and get there.
Trump’s budget proposal has also killed NASA’s Mars search plans, robotic Mars samples withdrawing the mission to bring rocks and soil to the Earth from the red planet in the 2030s. However, the program was frozen by the Biden administration due to delay and cost increase.
Sources said that the budget target is to create an ecosystem, rather than having a $ 8 billion sample sample return mission, in which such missions are often occurring. The benefit of opening the way for Mars with commercial companies is that it not only allows the Return Mission for the same Mars sample, but also at a low cost.
“The fact is that we want to get down the big things, including the cabin of the staff on the moon and Mars, and bring them back to the ground,” said a Republican space policy adviser. “Instead of creating a series of expensive Baspock robotic landers to science, let’s create a cost -effective re -prevailing landers that can support both cargo and staff on the moon and Mars, with minimal changes.”