A proposal for a Russian-American mission to Mars has been made by Kirill Dmitrijew, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), in a post on the X platform. Dmitrijew suggested the mission as a collaboration for the benefit of humanity, citing the upcoming 50th anniversary of the first international spaceflight, the Soyuz-Apollo mission, in 2025 and the potential for a joint US-Russian Mars mission in 2029.
The proposal was in response to a statement by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who announced that his companies plan to send a human-like robot, named “Optimus” to Mars by the end of the year. According to Musk, Tesla will manufacture the robot and SpaceX will transport it to Mars using the Starship rocket. If the landing is successful, humans may be able to travel to Mars as early as 2029, Musk stated.
The idea of a joint space mission is not new, as the Soviet Union and the United States collaborated on a project in the past. On July 15, 1975, a Soyuz spacecraft launched from Baikonur and an Apollo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral and the two spacecraft docked in orbit two days later. The historic handshake between Alexei Leonov and Thomas Stafford took place at an altitude of 230 kilometers, with Leonov being the first person to walk in space and Stafford having come close to the Moon during the Apollo-10 mission.
The two spacecraft spent two days in orbit, with the cosmonauts and astronauts visiting each other’s vessels and conducting a series of scientific and technological experiments.