Are Manned Missions Needed to Explore Mars?

According to many scientists, manned space missions should be a thing of the past and not the future, because these missions are dangerous and costly. They argue that today's intelligence robots and satellites are already doing a good job at exploring Mars, and are more durable than humans to be stranded millions of miles from home. They also cite some potential problems of manned space missions to Mars such as how to protect human beings from the hazards of long term space travel. These hazards include cosmic radiation, weightlessness, and psychological stress.

According to Doug Millard, space curator of the Science Museum in London, "You can now put together a pretty decent unmanned mission for a few hundred million euros (dollars), but you are usually talking about many billions for a manned mission." Some scientists suggest that "rather than preparing for some distant future when human beings might have to flee our planet, we might be better off trying to maintain the one we have." Such as investing more in satellites like the Envisat, the largest Earth observation spacecraft ever built, will help us monitor Earth's atmosphere, oceans and ice caps.

I'm sure these debates on manned space missions will continue for some time.

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Are_manned_missions_needed_to_explore_Mars_and_beyond_999.html