“THE idea of humans expanding our presence out into the solar system is the vision driving NASA,” says Louis Friedman, president of the US-based Planetary Society. “It’s about exploration, and always has been.”
It is also a vision President Bush has articulated for the US, arguing for human missions to the moon and Mars at a time when NASA is floundering, its space shuttles still grounded and its astronauts embarrassed into using the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to fly to and fro between the International Space Station (ISS) and Earth. It is against this backdrop that Michael Griffin took over from…
