By Deborah Zabarenko
 WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Humans could venture to Mars in 20 years or less,
NASA chief Daniel Goldin said on Tuesday, in comments that made
orbital space flight sound positively last century.
``We have
been locked in Earth orbit for too long, but we are going to break
out,'' Goldin told a symposium on the 40-year history of U.S.
human space flight.
``Let's burn
into our brains that this civilization is not condemned to live
on only one planet,'' he said. ``Let's burn it into our brains
that in our lifetimes, we will extend the reach of this human
species onto other planets and to other bodies in our solar system
and build the robots that will leave our solar system to go to
other stars, then ultimately to be followed by people.''
He detailed
NASA's plans to launch a precision lander spacecraft toward Mars
in 2007, with Martian samples to be collected and returned to
Earth by 2009 to 2011.
During the
next five or six years, he said, scientists would figure out how
to surmount ``unbelievable health problems'' on the International
Space Station and how to escape Earth orbit with humans aboard.
``In no less
than 10 -- and if we decide to do it, it could be done in 10 --
and certainly no more than 20 years we'll start writing history
again and not looking back but looking forward,'' Goldin told
the symposium at George Washington University.
Goldin did
not commit NASA to sending humans to Mars, but clearly indicated
a belief that it could happen. He stressed the need for a big
goal for space in the coming years to draw public focus, and suggested
human exploration of Mars might be such a goal.
Anniversary
Of Human Space Flight
The occasion
for his remarks was the anniversary of the first U.S. human space
flight on May 5, 1961 by Alan Shepard. He collected the NASA Distinguished
Service Medal at the White House exactly 40 years ago on May 8,
1961. Shepard died in 1998.
Officials
at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have been
generally wary of predicting when humans might go to Mars, Earth's
next-door planetary neighbor.
At a briefing
in March, Ed Weiler, head of NASA's office of space science, said
upcoming unstaffed missions to the Red Planet aimed to check on
the presence of radiation and water, two key factors that could
determine whether humans might survive on Mars.
Goldin did
not mention recent controversy over U.S. businessman Dennis Tito's
$20 million tourist flight to the International Space Station,
but said those who fly in space, like Shepard, are ``a breed apart.''
``Alan Shepard
and every other astronaut who are star voyagers with the right
stuff should not be thought of simply as passengers or visitors
to space,'' Goldin said. ``They are blazing a pioneering trail
that will be followed once they have made the way safe.''
NASA has objected
to Tito's flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, saying it
was premature and risked distracting the station crew. Last week,
Goldin told a congressional panel that Tito was causing stress
at NASA, while he praised another aspiring amateur astronaut,
filmmaker James Cameron, for saying he would wait until the time
was right.
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