HOUSTON: A team of US astronauts could leave to go to Mars in the early 1980s, George Mueller, head of the NASA space flights programme told a Press conference here yesterday [July 24].

Mr Mueller said Mars will be the next major goal for manned planetary exploration. “The choice is clear: we must take the next step,” he said. The flight to Mars would probably end in a landline on “the red planet” since it would take between one and a half and two years, he said. “Apollo-11 has proved that man can successfully travel to another planet,” Mr Mueller affirmed.

Mr Mueller said the USA had the necessary means and the knowledge to travel to other planets, and while it would be necessary to wait for an official “go-ahead” decision, the time for that decision had arrived.

An intermediate stage would be the launching of space stations orbiting the Earth, which would be necessary, he said, for a future flight to Mars. — Agency

[Meanwhile, as reported by another agency in Houston,] The first samples of rock ever brought back to Earth from an alien world arrived at the lunar receiving laboratory here today [July 24] for preliminary analysis.

A sealed box containing about 33 pounds of small bits of rock and stone, picked up by Apollo-11’s astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin during their moon walk last weekend, were flown to the quarantine laboratory from the aircraft carrier Hornet in the Pacific.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2019