Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin addresses the 32nd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., with an Apollo-era picture of himself serving as a backdrop. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Nearly five decades after his first spaceflight, Buzz Aldrin is still thinking about the next giant leap to Mars. Today he shared his latest plan for sending astronauts to the Red Planet for regular tours of duty, starting in 2040.
“From that point, we will always have humans living there,” the 86-year-old Apollo 11 moonwalker told his audience at the 32nd Space Symposium here.
The mission architecture, which Aldrin calls Cycling Pathways to Mars, relies on transfer spacecraft that cycle perpetually between the Earth-moon system and Mars and its moons.
