With the ISS slated to go out of business in 2020 the world needs to decide exactly where manned cosmonautics is going from there. Speaking at a professional roundtable, held on the fringes of the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, the new head of Roscosmos space agency, Vladimir Popovkin, outlined what he described as a two-pronged future of manned space flights.

"First, we need to continue our exploration of the Moon. Secondly, we need a better picture of how our solar system actually came about and for this we'll have to fly to Mars and its satellites... This year we are going to send a probe to get rock samples from one of the Red Planet's satellites," Popovkin said.

The US, Russia, the European Space Agency, India, China and even Iran have long unveiled their plans of manned missions to the Moon. Some of these plans seem to have changed a tad over the past few years though with NASA setting its sights on a mission to an incoming asteroid and Russia focusing on unmanned flights to the Moon and the creation of a permanent base there.

A manned flight to Mars still remains an overarching priority though, Vladimir Popovkin said.

"Man has already walked on the Moon, so doing it again makes no sense... Mars is a different... It's a whole new objective calling for new breakthrough technology and a whole new exploration track too," Popovkin said.

In November NASA will be sending a science lab to Mars with Russian and European instruments on board and here the ISS could serve as an orbital training center for future manned flights to the Red Planet.

Lang-haul space missions require new sources of energy and new engines too, said Vitaly Lapota, the head of Russia's Energiyaspace rocket corporation:

"There is one thing we all need to know and that is Mars is the farthest we can possibly go on a manned mission. To go beyond this limit we need a new sourse of energy..."

"Nuclear energy could answer this question, the participants agreed, but viable nuclear jet engines are still a thing of the future..."

Vladimir Popovkin then reminded that the Russian space industry is one of the few competitive sectors around and here Russia is ready for equal-footed cooperation with everyone and has everything it needs to take up between 10% and 12% of the global space exploration market.

Source: Voice of Russia

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