March 16 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced plans to launch a mission to Mars by next year — maybe ahead of both U.S. space pioneer Elon Musk and NASA.
“We are planning unmanned and later manned launches — into deep space, as part of a lunar program and for Mars exploration. The closest mission is very soon, we are planning to launch a mission to Mars in 2019,” Putin said in a new documentary.
Putin added that a lunar exploration program would also target the polar regions of the moon.
“Our specialists will try landing near the poles because there are reasons to expect water there. There is research to be done there, and from that, research of other planets and outer space can be undertaken,” Putin said.
The Russian space program has plans for a test landing at the moon’s southern pole next year, technology that can be used for a permanent lunar outpost and a soil retrieval mission in the early 2020s. It also said a base on the moon could be built by the 2040s or 2050s.
Putin’s stated space plans came days after Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed plans to launch a spacecraft for Mars, also by next year.
“We are building the first ship, or interplanetary ship, right now,” Musk said. “And we’ll probably be able to do short flights, short up and down flights, probably sometime in the first half of next year.”
NASA, meanwhile, is also planning to visit Mars in a 2020 mission to investigate the red planet’s potential for life.
