Reuters reported Monday that French president Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed an international Mars exploration effort. The report is short on details, but Sarkozy, visiting the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, said that Mars exploration “can only be global”, with each nation participating “with their capabilities, their strengths and their choices.” It should be noted that nowhere in the report does Sarkozy specify he’s referring to human missions to Mars, just Mars exploration in the vaguest sense.
It’s interesting to compare the Reuters report with this French-language AFP article, which also covers Sarkozy’s speech in Kourou. The AFP article makes no mention of Mars exploration, human or robotic. Instead, the article discusses more general space policy comments made by Sarkozy, covering the role of the European Union in carrying out pan-European projects like Galileo, Earth observation, and surveillance. Sarkozy called for a “reasoned and coherent” space policy that balanced European capabilities with its ambitions. Sarkozy also called for a significant increase in France’s military space budget as part of a bid for “strategic autonomy” for Europe.
going out of political propaganda… NO one country can afford the veryb high costs of Mars exploration alone, so, that kind of travels will be international, or, simply, will be NOT