“Russian” to the Martian Frontier, Nov 22, 2011

In the twentieth century, the United States won the race to the Moon. In this century, though, don’t be surprised if Russia is the first to land a human on Mars. Roscosmos (Russia’s official space agency) is not only making bold promises about sending human explorers to Earth’s red neighbor; it’s making concrete progress in the here and now toward delivering on them.

NASA, continuing its descent from world-class space agency into undervalued arm of the Environmental Protection Agency, left Europe hanging last summer when it reneged on its promise to build a launch vehicle for the ExoMars mission. This mission, as THE FUTURIST discussed earlier this year, was supposed to be a joint venture by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to deploy a robot satellite to Mars in 2016, and a robotic land rover in 2018, for the purposes of searching the planet’s surface for signs of past life. With NASA suddenly bailing, ESA was left with a good satellite but no means of launching it.

In the twentieth century, the United States won the race to the Moon. In this century, though, don’t be surprised if Russia is the first to land a human on Mars. Roscosmos (Russia’s official space agency) is not only making bold promises about sending human explorers to Earth’s red neighbor; it’s making concrete progress in the here and now toward delivering on them.
NASA, continuing its descent from world-class space agency into undervalued arm of the Environmental Protection Agency, left Europe hanging last summer when it reneged on its promise to build a launch vehicle for the ExoMars mission. This mission, as THE FUTURIST discussed earlier this year, was supposed to be a joint venture by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to deploy a robot satellite to Mars in 2016, and a robotic land rover in 2018, for the purposes of searching the planet’s surface for signs of past life. With NASA suddenly bailing, ESA was left with a good satellite but no means of launching it."