Michael Collins, chairman of the Council's Task Force on Space Program Goals, urged the NASA Advisory Council March 3 to undertake a multinational program of Mars exploration as a tonic for post-Challenger malaise.
"We need to restore some health to the invalid," Collins said of the agency. The multinational Mars effort should include the Soviet Union, he said, but the United States also should be able to do the program alone if necessary. Collins, part of the Apollo 11 lunar landing crew, gave no deadline for the mission, but said that "now is the time to get on with it."
Listening to the presentation, Louis Lanzerotti, chairman of NASA's Space and Earth Science Advisory Committee, warned that "science has changed since the Apollo [Moon landing} program, and planetary exploration is only one of four or five of the space sciences." He said after the meeting that such a new venture ...
