Ahead of House Science Hearing, NASA Floats Phobos Pit Stop on the Road to Mars

摘要

Getting astronauts to Mars in the 2030s could involve a pit stop at the planet's largest moon, Phobos - a staging area where NASA could leverage both technology and lessons learned from its proposed asteroid retrieval mission, agency officials said here June 23. "The moons of Mars pose a significant advantage as a waypoint on the way to the surface of Mars," Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division, said at agency headquarters here during a June 23 meeting of the NASA Advisory Council's Human Exploration and Operations Committee. "If we choose to go through Phobos on our way to the surface of Mars, that environment of interacting with the asteroid will be nearly the same environment as interacting with Phobos."