Bush 'to announce new mission to Mars'

President George Bush is set to announce plans to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior US administration officials said today.

The mission would be more than a decade from now, an official said.

In addition to a trip to the moon for the first time since December 1972, the president also wants to build a permanent space station there.

Three senior officials said Bush wanted to aggressively reinvigorate the US space programme, which has been demoralised by a series of setbacks, including the Columbia space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials said Bush’s announcement would come in the middle of next week.

Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.

This week, Nasa landed a six-wheeled robot on Mars to study the planet. However, the Spirit rover is stuck because the air bags which cushioned its landing are obstructing its movement.

No one, least of all members of Congress, knows how Nasa would pay for lunar camps or Mars expeditions. President George Bush, the current president’s father, pushed such an ambitious ideas on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing – the estimated price tag was $400-500bn (€314.6-393.24).

The moon is just a three day trip while Mars is at least six months away, and the lunar surface therefore could be a safe place to store Martian equipment.

Observatories also could be built on the moon, and mining camps could be set up to gather helium-3 for conversion into fuel for use back on Earth.

A task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney has been considering options for a space mission since summer.

Former US Senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has said that before deciding to race off to the moon or Mars, the US needs to complete the international space station and provide the taxi service to accommodate a full crew of six or seven. The station currently houses two.

At the same time, Glenn has said, Nasa could be laying out a long-term plan, setting a loose timetable and investing in the engineering challenges of sending people to Mars. The only sensible reason for going to the moon first, he says, would be to test the technology for a Mars trip.

The United States put 12 men on the moon between 1969 and 1972.