INTERNATIONAL NEWS - “This time we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint,” Trump said at a White House ceremony as he signed the new space policy directive.
“We will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond.”
The directive calls on NASA to ramp up its efforts to send people to deep space, a policy that unites politicians on both sides of the aisle in the United States.
However, it steered clear of the most divisive and thorny issues in space exploration: budgets and timelines.
Space policy experts agree that any attempt to send people to Mars, which lies an average of 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) from Earth, would require immense technical prowess and a massive wallet.
The last time US astronauts visited the Moon was during the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
On July 20, 1969, US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
