Auteur: JR. Wesley T. Huntress

Dr. Wesley T. Huntress, Jr., is currently Director Emeritus at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The author was the widely respected Director of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Directorate from 1990 to 1992, and then Associate Administrator for Space Science from 1993 to 1998, where he was responsible for all of NASA’s robotic science missions. During this time, and throughout his long and distinguished career, Dr. Huntress, Jr. has had a regular and sustained contact and interaction with the Russians. He has gained great appreciation of the Russian robotic exploration program of the Moon and the planets during the 20th century. Mikhail Marov is a long-time veteran of the Soviet scientific space program with experience on many past missions beginning the early 1970s and is currently at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry in Moscow, one of the two principal scientific institutes involved in the Russian space program.  He is well known internationally and is one of the most recognizable Russian experts in space science and exploration around the world.