FPI / February 14, 2025
By Richard Fisher
President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 oath to “…plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars” has not gone unnoticed in Russia — and very likely also in China.
On Feb. 7 Russian dictator Vladimir Putin touted Russia’s longstanding Mars ambitions even though his space program remains moribund, especially following the suspension of broad cooperation with the United States and Europe — save for sharing trips with the U.S. to the International Space Station (ISS).
During a Russian media interview Putin reformulated a longstanding Russian intention to put people on Mars, but also to share technology with “partners,” saying:
“For today, we don’t have these materials, but, overall, this is possible, and we will work on it. So why am I saying this? We have been hearing from abroad, and we have been hearing it all around that we need to work on Mars, and we need to reach Mars. But we don’t have the materials, not yet, but we’ll try to make sure that Russia is the first to develop these materials. This way we will have something to offer to our partners in terms of working together.”
While it is undeniable that Russia has been developing Mars-related space travel technologies since the at least the 1960s, Putin also has a record of touting Russia’s Mars ambitions when other nations advance their Mars ambitions.
Putin’s latest mention of Mars may reflect the latter, responding to President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration speech statement, “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Speaking in a March 2019 election documentary, Putin said, “Very soon, in 2019, we’re going to launch a mission toward Mars…Our experts will try to land on the poles because there is reason to believe there may be water…Research of other planets and outer space could begin from there.”
This followed President Trump’s first term Dec. 11, 2017 Space Policy Directive-1, committing the U.S. to return people to the Moon, with Trump saying, “we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond.”
But Russia did not launch a mission to Mars in 2019, and out of 19 Mars missions Russia has launched since October 1960, with eight attempts to put a lander on Mars, only one succeeded.
However, despite the many self-generated wounds to it space program, especially the loss of international cooperation with the West following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s ambitions to reach Mars deserve attention due to its longstanding investments in the development of nuclear-powered space propulsion systems to reach Mars.
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