‘You need a vision of going somewhere, doing something that is hard, going further than humans have ever been before’

Plans to send humans back to the moon lack “vision”, according to the first Briton in space, who says that the true challenge is now to send our species to Mars.

Former astronaut Helen Sharman, who undertook an eight-day mission to the Mir space station in 1991, was speaking to the Guardian ahead of her appearance at the Leeds international festival 2018.



Asked whether she backed Barack Obama’s plan to send humans to Mars or Donald Trump’s policy to first return to the moon, she said Mars had to be the goal, and that the planned lunar missions of both Nasa and the European Space Agency were driven by a need for a short-term achievement.



“The moon is certainly achievable, we have been there already, but from what I can see there is no vision there – you need a vision of going somewhere, doing something that is hard, going further than humans have ever been before,” she said. “You may need to go to the moon in order to get there, but I think that is a means to an end. Mars is the vision, and that is where humans need to continue to be exploring to.”



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The Mir space station broke up in the atmosphere over the South Pacific in 1991 after being deorbited, but the International Space Station (ISS) continues to host astronauts from all over the world, who are currently shuttled to and fro aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. China is set to start operations in the coming years on the second of its own space stations – the first having recently crashed to Earth – while companies such as SpaceX are building rockets both for launching instruments and for human space travel.

Sharman welcomed the efforts of private companies, saying they will bring down the cost of putting scientists into space and open up the possibility of space travel to others. But she said it is important to make space travel greener and address the growing issue of space junk, suggesting that she was in favour of policing activities in space. “There is a United Nations committee on peaceful usage of space but it doesn’t have an awful lot of teeth,” she said. “It is about making sure we are using space in the best possible way.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cosmonauts including Helen Sharman prior to launch on the Soyuz TM-12 mission in 1991. Photograph: SVF2/UIG via Getty Images

While Sharman backs further exploration, she said humans should tread lightly. “I think we have to continue to explore but we have to do it with environmental concerns in mind, and we shouldn’t just be allowed to go off and mine an asteroid, mine the moon and do what we like with Mars and then find it is uninhabitable in 100 years time,” she said.

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While some have said tensions between Russia and the west are worse than they were during the cold war, others say political problems on Earth are not felt in space – and that there is little chance of relations on board the ISS turning chilly.



“In that [political tensions] will affect relations for all sorts of things, they must have some sort of impact,” said Sharman, “but the Russian space agency, and the Russian politicians, will understand that being in space and liaising with the rest of the world is a key part of their economy, of their culture ... as do the Europeans, the Japanese, the Americans and so on.

“It is a showcase, really. Pulling out of their work in space would probably affect the Russians more than it affects the rest of the space community.”

Sharman was a 26-year-old research chemist working on ice cream for the confectionary company Mars when she heard a radio advert that was to change her life – a call for applicants for a space mission called Project Juno, a privately financed collaboration between the UK and Soviet Union. Sharman was selected from more than 13,000 applications and trained for 18 months before takeoff.

The mission, she said, changed her outlook on life. “It was a bit like going on a very very basic, isolated camping trip. I had all the food I needed, the clothes I needed, the water I needed – it was more or less the right temperature and I had the equipment I needed to do what I needed to do.” But, Sharman added, “You miss the human contact – you miss your family, your friends – and I think it is putting that kind of thing into perspective. It was good for me to be able to do it at a relatively young age.”

Whether she still tucks into a Mars bar, she declined to say.