WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush will announce plans next
week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human
presence on the moon, senior administration officials said last
night.

Bush won’t propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon;
rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade
from now, one official said.

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

Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively
reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a
series of setbacks, including the space-shuttle disaster last
February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, 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.

Many insiders had speculated he might set forth goals at the
100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ famed flight last
month in North Carolina. Instead, he said only that America would
continue to lead the world in aviation.

Earlier, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters
traveling with Bush in Florida that the president would make an
announcement about space next week, but he declined to give
details.

It’s possible Bush could make the announcement in his
State of the Union address later this month, painfully close to the
anniversaries of both the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.

It was the Columbia tragedy that helped force a discussion of
where NASA should venture beyond the space shuttle and
international space station. The panel that investigated the
Columbia accident called for a clearly defined long-term mission
— a national vision for space that has gone missing for three
decades.

House Science Committee spokeswoman Heidi Tringe said lawmakers
on the panel “haven’t been briefed on the
specifics” of the plan but expected an announcement.

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) a member of the House Science
Committee, said he welcomed the move because he has tried to get
the president more interested in space exploration.

“I had the feeling the last 2 1/2 years people would
rather make a trip to the grocery store than a trip to the moon
because of the economy,” Hall said. “As things are
turning around, we need to stay in touch with space” and the
science spinoffs it provides.

On Saturday, NASA landed a six-wheeled robot on Mars to study
the planet. However, the Spirit rover is stuck because the air bags
that cushioned its landing are obstructing its movement. A second
rover named Opportunity was sent in its wake and should land on
Jan. 24.

Asked Wednesday whether the success of the Mars rovers could
lead to a human mission to Mars, NASA Administrator Sean
O’Keefe said, “The rovers are a precursor mission
— kind of an advance team — to figuring out what the
conditions are on the planet, and once we figure out how to deal
with the human effects, we can then send humans to explore in real
time.”

While answering questions on the White House Web site,
O’Keefe said interplanetary exploration depends on
“what we learn and whether we can develop the power
and… propulsion capabilities necessary to get there faster
and stay longer and potentially support humans in doing
so.”

On the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing in
1989, his father, then-President Bush, called for lunar colonies
and a Mars expedition: “I’m not proposing a 10-year
plan like Apollo; I’m proposing a long-range, continuing
commitment. … For the new century: Back to the moon; back to
the future. And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into
tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to
Mars.”

The prohibitively expensive plan went nowhere.

No one, least of all members of Congress, knows how NASA would
pay for lunar camps or Mars expeditions. When the first President
Bush proposed such a project, the estimated price tag was $400
billion to $500 billion.

The moon is just three days away while Mars is at least six
months away, and the lunar surface therefore could be a safe place
to shake out 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.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) among others, has
called for an expansion of the U.S. space program, including a
return to the moon. The United States put 12 men on the moon
between July 1969 and December 1972.