MOSCOW, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The future Mars manned exploration projects will only become true by using nuclear energy, said President and Chief Designer of Russia's Energia Aerospace Corporation Vitaly Lopota here on Monday.

    Since current rocket technologies are not sufficient for the future exploration of Mars and the whole Solar system, and since no alternative energy resources have been found as of now, the only possible way to implement those projects would be by using nuclear energy, Lopota said at an academic conference on aerospace.

    Lopota also believed that the Mars projects should be prioritized over the Lunar ones, because the technologies applied to the former could be used in the latter, but it would be more difficult to achieve the goal in the reversed order.