MOSCOW. July 5 (Interfax) - Russia intends to take part in a future international manned flight to Mars, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Central Research Institute of Machinery Construction Nikolai Anfimov has said.
"An expedition to Mars and back will take around 440 days. The Russian cosmonaut and doctor Valery Polyakov confirmed the reality of such a project by spending 438 days in space," Anfimov told a press conference on Friday.
There are several scenarios for a manned flight to Mars, which have been worked out not only in Russia, but also by specialists from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of Japan and Canada, he said.
The Russian scenario, which specialists started working on back in the 1960s, has been gradually winning more and more recognition, Anfimov said. According to this project, "six cosmonauts will fly to Mars on an inter-planetary spacecraft. The crew would consist of captain, second pilot, flight engineer, space doctor, and two researchers. These two space researchers would be the ones to descend to the planet, to spend 30 to 60 days there, and then return to the spacecraft, which would be waiting for them in Mars orbit," Anfimov said.
Experts have displayed particularly keen interest in studying Mars since an American unmanned spacecraft equipped with a Russian HAND device discovered water at a depth of 10 to 30 centimeters under the planet's surface. Experts believe that since there is water, there must be life there, too, although it can so far only be guessed in what forms it existed. On the other hand, experts believe that the exploration of Mars's development could largely explain trends of Earth development as well.
In the view of specialists, a project of a manned space flight to Mars would be possible to implement no sooner than 2015, and only through international cooperation.
Negotiations on this project are currently underway between specialists from Russia, NASA, and the European Space Agency. Designs for inter-planet spacecraft and computer models of their flights to Mars have already been created.