Donald Trump signs bill pushing for manned Nasa mission to Mars by 2033

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a bill into law that set a goal for the country’s space agency Nasa to send humans to Mars by 2033. The bill, known as the Nasa Transition Authorization Act, authorised $19.5 billion budget in spending for Nasa for the fiscal year 2017, Xinhua reported. The bill reaffirmed “our national commitment to the core mission of Nasa ,” Trump said, according to a pool report.

“It supports Nasa’s deep space exploration including the space launch system and the Orion spacecraft … It advances space science by maintaining a balanced set of mission and activities to explore our solar system and the entire universe.” Under the bill, Nasa was directed to further advance human deep space exploration, including establishing “potential human habitation on another celestial body and a thriving space economy in the 21st Century.”

It also ordered the agency to develop a human exploration roadmap for “the long-term goal of human missions near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s” and specifically asked for a feasibility study of a Mars human spaceflight mission to be launched in 2033. Last week, the Trump administration proposed a budget that would reduce NASA’s fiscal year 2018 budget to 19.1 billion dollars.

Nasa has already been preparing for manned missions to Mars in the 2030. In a story for CNN authored by ex US President, Barack Obama Wrote “We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time.” The manned mission to send pioneers on the surface of the planet is just one of the many missions to Mars planned over the course of the next few decades.

Nasa wants to send pioneers on the surface, that will be supported by spacecraft from private companies. The first humans to visit Mars are expected to harvest local resources , and live off the land on Mars, as they cannot possibly transport all the materials needed from the Earth itself. The plans include setting up farms on Mars, and 3D printing shelters. Nasa also wants to make Mars more suitable for human explorers by giving the Red Planet an artificial magnetosphere . Elon Musk wants to go ahead and establish the first permanent human settlement on Mars .

The Trump administration has tweaked the budget of the space agency, by reducing funding for environmental research , and focusing more on manned missions which have a symbolic quality in addition to the potential to progress science. “Overall science funding is stable, although some missions in development will not go forward and others will see increases,” NASA acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. “We remain committed to studying our home planet and the universe, but are reshaping our focus within the resources available to us — a budget not far from where we have been in recent years, and which enables our wide ranging science work on many fronts,” Lightfoot said.

Trump has even asked Nasa to put humans on the debut flight of its new Heavy Lift rocket, a mission that Nasa previously did not plan to be a manned one. US President Donald Trump’s top spymaster nominee has said he was “shocked”  to know that India successfully launched over 100 satellites in one go , asserting that America cannot afford to be seen lagging behind.

With inputs from IANS