NASA’s top two administrators—including Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Congress this week the moon has not superseded Mars as a human-spaceflight target.
Bridenstine, the former 1st District U.S. Representative from Tulsa was joined by Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in testifying Wednesday before the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness.
“The moon is the proving ground, and Mars is the goal,” Bridenstine said, explaining the Red Planet is the ultimate destination while the moon will be a stepping stone.
As Space.com reported, NASA plans to start building a moon-orbiting space station called the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway in 2022. It will eventually be a waypoint for future missions to the lunar surface and more-distant destinations such as Mars.
“The glory of the moon is that it’s only a three-day journey home,” Bridenstine added. “So, we can prove all of the technologies, we can reduce all of the risks, we can try all of the different maturations that are necessary to live and work on another world. And we can do it all at the moon, where, if there is a problem, if there is an emergency, we know that we can get people home.”
He cited NASA’s Apollo 13 mission in 1970, which famously managed to make it safely back to Earth despite experiencing a serious problem on the way to the moon.