US: In an election year what else do you promise but the moon? The US President Mr George Bush is planning to send astronauts back to the moon, and establish a science base there for astronauts to travel ultimately to Mars. White House press secretary Mr Scott McClellan said that Mr Bush would deliver a speech on Wednesday describing his vision of the long-term direction of the space programme, writes Conor O'Clery, in New York
He did not give details but administration sources said it would involve a resumption of the shuttle programme suspended after last year's Columbia disaster, the sending of manned space capsules to the moon within 10 years and the establishment of a moon base for an eventual manned flight to Mars around 2050.
Officials have not explained how the Bush administration would pay for the first stages of a hugely expensive space programme while the US is struggling with record budget deficits and a costly conflict in Iraq. Sceptics point out that Mr Bush has not been known for his passion for space - while governor of Texas he never once visited the Houston space centre - and that his father, president George Bush, made a similar call for a lunar station and a Mars expedition in 1989 that went nowhere.
With his announcement on immigration reform earlier this week, Mr Bush is putting forward two major new policy initiatives at a time when earth-bound Democrats are hoping to draw attention to their nomination process which begins shortly in Iowa and New Hampshire.
A trip to the moon, last undertaken in 1972, takes three days but a journey to the red planet would require six months, and would expose astronauts to massive radiation. The shuttle rockets are not powerful enough to escape the earth's atmosphere and a new generation of space vehicles would have to be built for moon visits.
News of the initiative has reopened a debate on machines v humans in space.
Prof Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University, the Nobel-winning physicist who investigated the February 2003 shuttle accident, said: "I think we're still 30 years from going to Mars and if there's any reason to do that, I don't know."
Prof Robert Park of the University of Maryland said that human space travel was now a "curiously old-fashioned" idea in a time when progress was measured "by the extent by which work that is dangerous or menial is done by machines".
Humans could also bring germs to Mars and contaminate any life there, he said.
Mr Andrew Chaiken, author of A Man in the Moon, said: "This is about more than science, it's about the human spirit and what this country can be." Space exploration would answer fundamental questions: "Where did we come from? Are we alone on the universe?"
The Columbia shuttle disaster, which killed seven astronauts, forced a debate about NASA's future, and a panel that investigated the disaster called for a clearly defined long-term mission, something lacking for three decades.
Earlier this week, Mr Bush called the successful landing of a robot on the red planet a "reconfirmation of the American spirit of exploration".
Another rover is due to arrive on Mars in two weeks.