Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will launch a mission to Mars in 2019, adding echoes of a space race to the Cold War-style nuclear arms development he announced earlier this month.
The statement comes ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, in which he will almost certainly win a fourth term.
“We will now carry out unmanned and then manned launches to explore deep space, and a lunar programme, and then the exploration of Mars,” Mr Putin said in a state television film highlighting his accomplishments during 18 years in power. “The first will be very soon. In 2019 we are planning to launch a mission toward Mars.”
He also said Russia would try to land on the poles of the moon “because there’s reason to believe that water could be there”.
“The exploration of other planets and deep space could start from there,” he said.
Roscosmos said last year it will start a programme in 2019 to establish bases on the moon, where it will develop techniques for manned Mars missions.
Mr Putin’s pledge to reach the red planet follows cosmic sabre-rattling by the United States. This week, Donald Trump declared “space is a war-fighting domain” and suggested the US military could create a new “space force”.
Last month, air force chief of staff Gen David Goldfein said the United States would be “fighting from space in a matter of years”.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu has revealed plans for a new network of military satellites.
The competition in space mirrors that in the nuclear sphere, where Russia and the United States have embarked on a new arms race.
In his state-of-the-nation speech this month, Mr Putin announced a bevy of high-tech nuclear weapons he claimed would be able to avoid US missile defence, including hypersonic missiles, a glider warhead and a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
That followed Mr Trump’s promise this month to counter Russia’s nuclear modernisation by expanding the US strategic arsenal.
Credits : NASA
The United States is currently ahead of Russia in the Mars race. NASA, whose Curiosity rover has been roaming Mars for five years, plans in May to launch its InSight lander, which will measure seismic activity on the planet to study its composition.
A joint project by the European Space Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos sent an orbiter to Mars in 2016 and plans to deploy a rover there in 2019.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk, whose Falcon Heavy rocket delivered a red Tesla convertible car into space last month, said his SpaceX company could next year begin short flights of its BFR rocket, which he hopes will bring payloads to Mars by 2022 and people by 2024.
Just as the Soviet Union’s Mars programme suffered a string of failed missions, Roscosmos has experienced setbacks, including a November rocket crash that destroyed a payload of small spacecraft from Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.
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