Chris Hadfield, a former space shuttle astronaut who was the first Canadian to perform a spacewalk, says Canada should take the leap and begin planning its own mission to Mars.

"What's important is that we participate in this world exploration of the rest of the universe and Canada needs to choose where in that part we're going to be," he told Canada AM.

Hadfield says he agrees with his boss, Canadian Space Agency head Marc Garneau, that the country should aim for a Canadian-led Mars mission.

Garneau, Canada's first man in space, said earlier this week that Canadians "don't want to be spectators in the exploration of Mars," and a Canadian Mars mission will likely fly within 10 years. CSA managers and scientists are looking at two options -- one would examine the planet from orbit while the other would involve a landing.

Hadfield fully endorses the idea. He notes that Canada couldn't achieve a full space mission completely independent of the help of other nations, but it could lead a mission.

"We would have to piggyback. We don't have rockets in Canada. We don't have our own launch pads. So it will be in cooperation with other countries no matter what we do," he said.

Hadfield notes that Canada has sent astronauts on NASA missions, has contributed the CanadArm to space shuttle flights, and now on the current Mars rover, has created the imaging sensors on the rover's nine cameras.

He notes there is a Canadian-built probe going to Mars in just three years, on NASA's Phoenix mission. Two Canadian companies will provide laser radar (lidar) technology to the mission, so that Canadian scientists and engineers can study the Martian atmosphere.

But he says the CSA still longs for a Canadian-led mission, in which we would outline the mission and reap the rewards of its success.

"What Marc is talking about is beyond that. It's to have a completely Canadian orbiter perhaps, or something that actually goes down to the surface and looks around, where we get someone else, the Europeans or the Chinese potentially, or the Americans to launch it.

"We would then have the opportunity to develop all of that science within Canada, to build the hardware in Canada and therefore, to have proprietary or at least majority return on the science that comes back from Mars."

He says while it may seem a far-fetched idea at the moment, he believes it's feasible. As for statistics that show that only 30 per cent of missions to Mars succeed, Hadfield says we shouldn't be daunted.

"We aren't doing this because it's easy. We're doing it because really, for the first time in history, it's possible. Don't forget, there were a lot of airplanes that crashed before you could get on an A-320 and ride across the country in comfort. We're at the early stages of this."

Hadfield says Canada has to ponder its future in space exploration and decide what kind of role it wants to play on the world stage.

"Whether it's cooperatively, like we've been doing with the space station and the space shuttle, providing and selling things to the probes that other countries are building going to Mars, or actually taking ownership of one particular payload or one particular satellite that is going to go to Mars."