Today modern technologies make it possible to fly to Mars, nevertheless it will be a conquest but not exploration, – Roscosmos cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin stated.

“Flight to the sake of the flight itself is already possible today, our technologies allow us to get to Mars in 9 months, take a step. But what’s next?” – questions Yurchikhin.

In due time we conquered the Moon but this Earth satellite still remains undeveloped. It is robots who conduct all experiments and explorations there, – the cosmonaut pointed out.
To my mind it is non-professional to speak about mars flight since we have to understand whether the country is able to accomplish such program from the economic point of view.
The cosmonaut believes that Red planet is to be explored but not just conquered. And the exploration is to be conducted in three stages.

At the first stage we need to carry out researches, NASA is dealing with it at the present time, – Yurchikhin noted. These are the researches conducted with the help of special equipment and providing information on Mars geography, geodesics and meteorology. At the second stage the scientists will send robots to Mars to create a base for human exploration of the planet. At this stage we’ll also have to build installations on water and oxygen drawing and develop satellite navigational system similar to GPS or GLONASS and at the 3rd stage only it will be possible to send people to Mars, – Yurchikhin believes.

“ I like this variant best of all, not a conquest but exploration of the planet. Thus we will create conditions necessary for humans to settle there”, – the cosmonaut said.