future human travel to mars

The future of spaceflight—from orbital vacations to humans on Mars

NASA aims to travel to the moon again—and beyond. Here’s a look at the 21st-century race to send humans into space.

Welcome to the 21st-century space race, one that could potentially lead to 10-minute space vacations, orbiting space hotels , and humans on Mars. Now, instead of warring superpowers battling for dominance in orbit, private companies are competing to make space travel easier and more affordable. This year, SpaceX achieved a major milestone— launching humans to the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States —but additional goalposts are on the star-studded horizon.

Private spaceflight

Private spaceflight is not a new concept . In the United States, commercial companies played a role in the aerospace industry right from the start: Since the 1960s, NASA has relied on private contractors to build spacecraft for every major human spaceflight program, starting with Project Mercury and continuing until the present.

Today, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is expanding on the agency’s relationship with private companies. Through it, NASA is relying on SpaceX and Boeing to build spacecraft capable of carrying humans into orbit. Once those vehicles are built, both companies retain ownership and control of the craft, and NASA can send astronauts into space for a fraction of the cost of a seat on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

SpaceX, which established a new paradigm by developing reusable rockets , has been running regular cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station since 2012. And in May 2020, the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft carried NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS , becoming the first crewed mission to launch from the United States in nearly a decade. The mission, called Demo-2, is scheduled to return to Earth in August. Boeing is currently developing its Starliner spacecraft and hopes to begin carrying astronauts to the ISS in 2021.

Other companies, such as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic , are specializing in sub-orbital space tourism. Test launch video from inside the cabin of Blue Origin’s New Shepard shows off breathtaking views of our planet and a relatively calm journey for its first passenger, a test dummy cleverly dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker.” Virgin Galactic is running test flights on its sub-orbital spaceplane , which will offer paying customers roughly six minutes of weightlessness during its journey through Earth’s atmosphere.

With these and other spacecraft in the pipeline, countless dreams of zero-gravity somersaults could soon become a reality—at least for passengers able to pay the hefty sums for the experience.

Early U.S. Spaceflight

Looking to the moon

Moon missions are essential to the exploration of more distant worlds. After a long hiatus from the lunar neighborhood, NASA is again setting its sights on Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor with an ambitious plan to place a space station in lunar orbit sometime in the next decade. Sooner, though, the agency’s Artemis program , a sister to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, is aiming to put the first woman (and the next man) on the lunar surface by 2024.

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Extended lunar stays build the experience and expertise needed for the long-term space missions required to visit other planets. As well, the moon may also be used as a forward base of operations from which humans learn how to replenish essential supplies, such as rocket fuel and oxygen, by creating them from local material.

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Such skills are crucial for the future expansion of human presence into deeper space, which demands more independence from Earth-based resources. And although humans have visited the moon before, the cratered sphere still harbors its own scientific mysteries to be explored—including the presence and extent of water ice near the moon's south pole, which is one of the top target destinations for space exploration .

NASA is also enlisting the private sector to help it reach the moon. It has awarded three contracts to private companies working on developing human-rated lunar landers—including both Blue Origin and SpaceX. But the backbone of the Artemis program relies on a brand new, state-of-the-art spacecraft called Orion .

Archival Photos of Spaceflight

Currently being built and tested, Orion—like Crew Dragon and Starliner—is a space capsule similar to the spacecraft of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, as well as Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft. But the Orion capsule is larger and can accommodate a four-person crew. And even though it has a somewhat retro design, the capsule concept is considered to be safer and more reliable than NASA’s space shuttle—a revolutionary vehicle for its time, but one that couldn’t fly beyond Earth’s orbit and suffered catastrophic failures.

Capsules, on the other hand, offer launch-abort capabilities that can protect astronauts in case of a rocket malfunction. And, their weight and design mean they can also travel beyond Earth’s immediate neighborhood, potentially ferrying humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

A new era in spaceflight

By moving into orbit with its Commercial Crew Program and partnering with private companies to reach the lunar surface, NASA hopes to change the economics of spaceflight by increasing competition and driving down costs. If space travel truly does become cheaper and more accessible, it’s possible that private citizens will routinely visit space and gaze upon our blue, watery home world—either from space capsules, space stations, or even space hotels like the inflatable habitats Bigelow Aerospace intends to build .

The United States isn’t the only country with its eyes on the sky. Russia regularly launches humans to the International Space Station aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. China is planning a large, multi-module space station capable of housing three taikonauts, and has already launched two orbiting test vehicles—Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2, both of which safely burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere after several years in space.

Now, more than a dozen countries have the ability to launch rockets into Earth orbit. A half-dozen space agencies have designed spacecraft that shed the shackles of Earth’s gravity and traveled to the moon or Mars. And if all goes well, the United Arab Emirates will join that list in the summer of 2020 when its Hope spacecraft heads to the red planet . While there are no plans yet to send humans to Mars, these missions—and the discoveries that will come out of them—may help pave the way.

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NASA’s Human Path to Mars

NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s - goals outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010.

Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and robotic and human exploration as we expand our presence into the solar system. Its formation and evolution are comparable to Earth, helping us learn more about our own planet's history and future. Mars had conditions suitable for life in its past. Future exploration could uncover evidence of life, answering one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?

While robotic explorers have studied Mars for more than 40 years, NASA's path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health.

Our next step is deep space, where NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit the moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will explore the asteroid in the 2020s, returning to Earth with samples. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities, such as Solar Electric Propulsion, which we'll need to send cargo as part of human missions to Mars. Beginning in FY 2018, NASA's powerful Space Launch System rocket will enable these "proving ground" missions to test new capabilities. Human missions to Mars will rely on Orion and an evolved version of SLS that will be the most powerful launch vehicle ever flown.

A fleet of robotic spacecraft and rovers already are on and around Mars, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover measured radiation on the way to Mars and is sending back radiation data from the surface. This data will help us plan how to protect the astronauts who will explore Mars. Future missions like the Mars 2020 rover, seeking signs of past life, also will demonstrate new technologies that could help astronauts survive on Mars.

Engineers and scientists around the country are working hard to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars, and safely return home from the next giant leap for humanity. NASA also is a leader in a Global Exploration Roadmap, working with international partners and the U.S. commercial space industry on a coordinated expansion of human presence into the solar system, with human missions to the surface of Mars as the driving goal. Follow our progress at www.nasa.gov/exploration and www.nasa.gov/mars.

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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots.

All About Mars

Small World

Mars is 53% smaller than Earth.

Fourth Rock

Mars is 1.52 AU from the Sun. Earth = 1.

A Martian day is a little longer than Earth's; a Mars year is almost two Earth years.

Rocky Planet

Mars' surface has been altered by volcanoes, impacts, winds, and crustal movement.

Bring a Spacesuit

Mars' atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, argon, and nitrogen.

Phobos and Deimos are small compared to the planet.

Mars has no rings.

Many Missions

The first success was NASA's Mariner 4 flyby in 1965,

The Search for Life

Missions are determining Mars' past and future potential for life.

The Red Planet

Iron minerals in the Martian soil oxidize, or rust, causing the soil and atmosphere to look red.

Mars Overview

Mars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun, Mars, is one of Earth's two closest planetary neighbors (Venus is the other). Mars is one of the easiest planets to spot in the night sky – it looks like a bright red point of light.

Despite being inhospitable to humans, robotic explorers – like NASA's Perseverance rover – are serving as pathfinders to eventually get humans to the surface of the Red Planet.

Why Do We Go?

Mars is one of the most explored bodies in our solar system, and it's the only planet where we've sent rovers to explore the alien landscape. NASA missions have found lots of evidence that Mars was much wetter and warmer, with a thicker atmosphere, billions of years ago.

Mars Relay Network

How we explore.

Mars 2020: Perseverance Rover

The Mars 2020 mission Perseverance rover is the first step of a proposed roundtrip journey to return Mars samples to Earth.

Mars Sample Return

NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are planning ways to bring the first samples of Mars material back to Earth for detailed study. 

Mars Curiosity Rover (Mars Science Laboratory)

Curiosity is investigating Mars to determine whether the Red Planet was ever habitable to microbial life.

Mars Resources

View the one-stop shop for all Mars iconic images, videos, and more!

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Beyond the Moon

Humans to mars.

Like the Moon, Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and a driver of technologies that will enable humans to travel and explore far from Earth.

Mars remains our horizon goal for human exploration because it is one of the only other places we know in the solar system where life may have existed. What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet.

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The upcoming Artemis II mission is the first step in a long mission

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NASA recently announced the crew of its upcoming Artemis II mission, which will be the first manned trip to the moon since 1972. The launch is being billed as the first step toward getting humans to Mars , but how does NASA plan to do that? Here's everything you need to know:

How will NASA get to Mars?

The journey will start with the Artemis program, which has the goal of establishing the first long-term human outpost on the moon. From there, NASA says , they "will use what we learn on and around the moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars."

In 2022, NASA unveiled a rough outline for its first crewed Mars mission, identifying "50 points falling under four overarching categories of exploration, including transportation and habitation; moon and Mars infrastructure; operations; and science." These objectives "will inform our exploration plans at the moon and Mars for the next 20 years," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.

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These objectives include , among other things, "[Developing] a transportation system that can deliver large surface elements from Earth to the Martian surface," as well as "[developing] Mars surface power sufficient for the initial human Mars demonstration mission," and building "entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems capable of delivering crew and large cargo to the Martian surface."

However, there is still a ton of work to be done, as making a human trip to Mars "will be challenging," Space.com writes. The distance itself will play a major factor. Earth and Mars are an average of 140 million miles away from each other, and it would take about 500 days round-trip to get between the two planets, "assuming the funding and technology come into play at the right time," the outlet adds. A lack of gravity would also pose a significant problem, so crews may have to live in a pressurized cabin during the mission to help acclimatize to the change.

If all goes well — and that is a big "if" — Space.com notes that NASA "envisions using a habitat-like spacecraft to ferry crew members to the red planet, using a hybrid rocket stage (powered by both chemical and electrical propulsion)." The initial mission would be made by four people, with two making the journey to the Martian surface. But since you can't live on a desolate planet by yourself, NASA estimates the crew would need at least 25 tons of supplies awaiting them on Mars, which will have been delivered by a prior rover mission.

How will Artemis II help accomplish this goal?

The mission, set to launch toward the end of 2024, will be the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft, the vessel that has been tapped to send humans to Mars. Both the Orion and the Space Launch System (SLS) associated with it "are critical to NASA's exploration plans at the moon and beyond," the agency writes .

The Orion capsule is specifically designed to keep humans alive during months-long missions, and "will be equipped with advanced environmental control and life support systems designed for the demands of a deep space mission," per NASA . The first step in proving that these systems are viable will be a successful Artemis II mission, which CNN reports will go beyond the moon and "potentially further than any human has traveled in history."

The upcoming mission is only a flyby, and while humans will not land on the moon until Artemis III, operating on the lunar surface requires "systems that can reliably operate far from home, support the needs of human life, and still be light enough to launch," NASA writes. As a result, "exploration of the moon and Mars is intertwined," with the moon providing a platform to test "tools, instruments, and equipment that could be used on Mars ."

When does NASA plan to go to Mars?

That could depend on how fast things develop. In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed an order directing NASA to send humans to Mars by 2033, and former President Barack Obama had set a similar goal of a mission in the 2030s, CNET reports.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pushed that date back slightly, saying the agency's plan "is for humans to walk on Mars by 2040," per CNN . Nelson added that the goal was to apply "what we've learned living and operating on the moon and continue them out into the solar system."

President Biden's budget proposal for the next fiscal year included an allocation of $27 billion to NASA, of which $7.6 billion would be used for deep-space exploration. However, negotiations on a budget deal are ongoing between Congress and the White House, so it remains to be seen how much of these potential NASA funds will actually see the light of day.

Who will go?

That probably won't be decided for years to come. Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in 2019 that "we could very well see the first person on Mars be a woman," per Space.com , but no specifics regarding an astronaut class were given. Artemis III is expected to land both the first woman and first person of color on the moon, so it won't come as much of a surprise if a similarly diverse group heads to the red planet. Elon Musk, who has worked alongside NASA via his spaceflight company SpaceX, has said he believes humans will be on Mars by 2029 at the latest, but he hasn't provided any names either.

For now, though, the question of who will be the first person to place their boots on the Martian surface remains a mystery.

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 Justin Klawans has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022. He began his career covering local news before joining Newsweek as a breaking news reporter, where he wrote about politics, national and global affairs, business, crime, sports, film, television and other Hollywood news. Justin has also freelanced for outlets including Collider and United Press International.  

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How NASA and SpaceX Will Get People From Earth to Mars and Safely Back Again

By Chris James, The University of Queensland April 25, 2021

This artist’s concept depicts astronauts and human habitats on Mars. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover carries a number of technologies that could make Mars safer and easier to explore for humans. Credit: NASA

There are many things humanity must overcome before any return journey to Mars is launched.

The two major players are NASA and SpaceX , which work together intimately on missions to the International Space Station but have competing ideas of what a crewed Mars mission would look like.

Size matters

The biggest challenge (or constraint) is the mass of the payload (spacecraft, people, fuel, supplies, etc.) needed to make the journey.

We still talk about launching something into space being like launching its weight in gold.

The payload mass is usually just a small percentage of the total mass of the launch vehicle.

For example, the Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo 11 to the Moon weighed 3,000 tonnes.

But it could launch only 140 tonnes (5% of its initial launch mass) to low Earth orbit, and 50 tonnes (less than 2% of its initial launch mass) to the Moon.

Mass constrains the size of a Mars spacecraft and what it can do in space. Every maneuver costs fuel to fire rocket motors, and this fuel must currently be carried into space on the spacecraft.

SpaceX’s plan is for its crewed Starship vehicle to be refueled in space by a separately launched fuel tanker. That means much more fuel can be carried into orbit than could be carried on a single launch.

Concept art of SpaceX’s Dragon landing on Mars. Credit: SpaceX

Time matters

Another challenge, intimately connected with fuel, is time.

Missions that send spacecraft with no crew to the outer planets often travel complex trajectories around the Sun. They use what are called gravity assist maneuvers to effectively slingshot around different planets to gain enough momentum to reach their target.

This saves a lot of fuel, but can result in missions that take years to reach their destinations. Clearly, this is something humans would not want to do.

Both Earth and Mars have (almost) circular orbits and a maneuver known as the Hohmann transfer is the most fuel-efficient way to travel between two planets. Basically, without going into too much detail, this is where a spacecraft does a single burn into an elliptical transfer orbit from one planet to the other.

A Hohmann transfer between Earth and Mars takes around 259 days (between eight and nine months) and is only possible approximately every two years due to the different orbits around the Sun of Earth and Mars.

A spacecraft could reach Mars in a shorter time (SpaceX is claiming six months) but — you guessed it — it would cost more fuel to do it that way.

Mars and Earth have few similarities. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Safe landing

Suppose our spacecraft and crew get to Mars. The next challenge is landing.

A spacecraft entering Earth is able to use the drag generated by interaction with the atmosphere to slow down. This allows the craft to land safely on the Earth’s surface (provided it can survive the related heating).

But the atmosphere on Mars is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s. That means less potential for drag, so it isn’t possible to land safely without some kind of aid.

Some missions have landed on airbags (such as NASA’s Pathfinder mission) while others have used thrusters (NASA’s Phoenix mission). The latter, once again, requires more fuel.

Life on Mars

A Martian day lasts 24 hours and 37 minutes but the similarities with Earth stop there.

The thin atmosphere on Mars means it can’t retain heat as well as Earth does, so life on Mars is characterized by large extremes in temperature during the day/night cycle.

Mars has a maximum temperature of 30℃ (86ºF), which sounds quite pleasant, but its minimum temperature is -140℃ (-220ºF), and its average temperature is -63℃ (-81ºF) . The average winter temperature at the Earth’s South Pole is about -49℃ (-56ºF) .

So we need to be very selective about where we choose to live on Mars and how we manage temperature during the night.

The gravity on Mars is 38% of Earth’s (so you’d feel lighter) but the air is principally carbon dioxide (CO₂) with several percent of nitrogen, so it’s completely unbreathable. We would need to build a climate-controlled place just to live there.

SpaceX plans to launch several cargo flights including critical infrastructure such as greenhouses, solar panels and — you guessed it — a fuel-production facility for return missions to Earth.

Life on Mars would be possible and several simulation trials have already been done on Earth to see how people would cope with such an existence.

This illustration shows NASA astronauts working on the surface of Mars. A helicopter similar to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is airborne at left. Ingenuity is being carried aboard the Perseverance rover; it was recently deployed to the Martian surface to test whether future helicopters could accompany robotic and human missions. Credit: NASA

Return to Earth

The final challenge is the return journey and getting people safely back to Earth.

Apollo 11 entered Earth’s atmosphere at about 40,000km/h (25,000 mph), which is just below the velocity required to escape Earth’s orbit.

Spacecraft returning from Mars will have re-entry velocities from 47,000km/h to 54,000km/h (29,000 mph to 34,000 mph), depending on the orbit they use to arrive at Earth.

They could slow down into low orbit around Earth to around 28,800km/h (17,900 mph) before entering our atmosphere but — you guessed it — they’d need extra fuel to do that.

If they just barrel into the atmosphere, it will do all of the deceleration for them. We just need to make sure we don’t kill the astronauts with G-forces or burn them up due to excess heating.

These are just some of the challenges facing a Mars mission and all of the technological building blocks to achieve this are there. We just need to spend the time and the money and bring it all together.

And we need to return people safely back to Earth, mission accomplished. Credit: NASA

Written by Chris James, Lecturer, Centre for Hypersonics, The University of Queensland.

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17 comments on "how nasa and spacex will get people from earth to mars and safely back again".

The main issue being ignored is the need for artificial gravity in route. Without artificial gravity in route the astronauts will have to crawl out of the spaceship once on Mars. A fully functioning astronaut is one who has been conditioned to the gravity on Mars, or Earth, during the journey. Treadmills be damned, use a revolving capsule to live and work in during the trip. Go into microgravity as required but not all of the time.

One way to get to Mars faster would be to go towards the moon, swing around the moon. Then use the Earth for gravity assist to Mars. Might then have to wait for the right time for the position of the moon.

Why? Why go there? Won’t we just start messing with the climate there, ruining the environment there like we’re doing here?

Not to mention all of the stellar and cosmic radiation that the crew would likely absorb in transit and on the surface.

So Chris, has the ‘Cabin Fever’ problem been addressed? You do know what I mean by that don’t you? Astronauts all cooped up and nowhere to go; to get away from each other, take a space stroll, some solitude, alone time. Anything to keep from killing each other. Eh?

No mention of the radiation issues. Both in deep space and on Mars. You may survive the mission only to be riddled with cancer on your return.

However…

“Space is the natural habitat of humans. A planet, is after all, is a object in space.” – Frank Herbert

So….. where’s the Boring tunneler? Clearly Elon’s companies on Earth are just a trial run and funding source for Mars. They’ll have an entire subterranean city and solar+storage farm built before anyone steps foot on the Red Planet.

Wouldn’t it be more secure to live be on Mars underground? Elon Musk’s borer would make short work of it. Especially if it could be done remotely.

Improve earth.stop spoiling earth.Lets make earth heaven again

What about if we all stop for a moment and better think about how to save our own planet earth 🌎 which is suffering due to our negligence! Let’s make our own paradise and then if you want to leave in Jupiter! Go ahead and do it! But let’s save our own planet first! Stop destroying it.

What about if we all stop for a moment and better think about how to save our own planet earth 🌎 which is suffering due to our negligence! Let’s make our own paradise and then if you want to live in Jupiter! Go ahead and do it! But let’s save our own planet first! Stop destroying it. Spending millions of dollars in stupid stuff while our beautiful sea lions’ home have been destroy due to climate change! WHAT ABOUT IF WE THINK FIRST HOW WE CAN RECOVER OUR MOTHER EARTH 🌎 FIRST!!!

I think this will never happen as there is no signs in any religion discussing life expect this planet. This will not happen.

If humans are sent to Mars it should be with the intention of it being permanent. Not like it was going to the moon and then not going back now going on 50 plus years. Just make the commitment like Kennedy did and do it! Life’s a dance, you learn as you go.

I agree there are lots of issues with traveling to Mars

Well the climate change is because of Joe Biden so lets thank him for killing all our precious animals effected by this stupid Presidential decision on f’ing with our climate change acting like there ain’t nothing at risk with trying to change it. honestly Trump is our only saviour and I’m Mexican and had family taken by immigration but Trump has more potential than Biden ever will. Biden is hurting us Mexican more than Trump ever had. by taking the jobs we came to the US 🇺🇸 for in the first place climate change is not what we need. And our presence on Mars should and will help the chance at further life on Mars even though death is a possibility and will happen but it will also help transforming Mars to a liveable planet in the process.

There are so many issues going there. The landing might be one of the trickiest since they need a lot of supplies with them. Enough food (edible and healthy), oxygen and water. And also having enough fuel to go back. I do not see this happening any time soon.

why cracking heads for what is not necessary knowing that death will still come. pls use your time For God.

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Crew of NASA’s Earthbound Simulated Mars Habitat Emerge After a Year

T he crew of a NASA mission to Mars emerged from their craft after a yearlong voyage that never left Earth.

The four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months inside NASA's first simulated Mars environment at Johnson Space Center in Houston, coming out of the artificial alien enviroment Saturday around 5 p.m.

Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones entered the 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023, as the maiden crew of the space agency's  Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog  project.

Haston, the mission commander, began with a simple, “Hello.”

“It’s actually just so wonderful to be able to say ‘hello’ to you all,” she said.

Jones, a physician and the mission medical officer, said their 378 days in confinement “went by quickly.”

The quartet lived and worked inside the space of 17,000 square feet (1,579 square meters) to simulate a mission to the red planet, the fourth from the sun and a frequent focus of discussion among scientists and sci-fi fans alike concerning a possible voyage taking humans beyond our moon.

The first CHAPEA crew focused on establishing possible conditions for future Mars operations through simulated spacewalks, dubbed “Marswalks,” as well as growing and harvesting vegetables to supplement their provisions and maintaining the habitat and their equipment.

They also worked through challenges a real Mars crew would be expected to experience including limited resources, isolation and delays in communication of up to 22 minutes with their home planet on the other side of the habitat's walls, NASA said.

Two additional CHAPEA missions are planned and crews will continue conducting simulated spacewalks and gathering data on factors related to physical and behavioral health and performance, NASA said.

Steve Koerner, deputy director of Johnson Space Center, said most of the first crew's experimentation focused on nutrition and how that affected their performance. The work was “crucial science as we prepare to send people on to the red planet,” he said.

“They've been separated from their families, placed on a carefully prescribed meal plan and undergone a lot of observation,” Koerner said.

“Mars is our goal,” he said, calling the project an important step in America's intent to be a leader in the global space exploration effort.

Emerging after a knock on the habitat's door by Kjell Lindgren, an astronaut and the deputy director of flight operations, the four volunteers spoke of the gratitude they had for each other and those who waited patiently outside, as well as lessons learned about a prospective manned mission to Mars and life on Earth.

Brockwell, the crew's flight engineer, said the mission showed him the importance of living sustainably for the benefit of everyone on Earth.

“I’m very grateful to have had this incredible opportunity to live for a year within the spirit of planetary adventure towards an exciting future, and I’m grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilise resources no faster than they can be replenished and produce waste no faster than they can be processed back into resources," Brockwell said.

“We cannot live, dream, create or explore on any significant timeframe if we don’t live these principles, but if we do, we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds," he said.

Science officer Anca Selariu said she had been asked many times why there is a fixation on Mars.

“Why go to Mars? Because it’s possible,” she said. "Because space can unite and bring out the best in us. Because it’s one defining step that ‘Earthlings’ will take to light the way into the next centuries.”

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Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?

NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation.

Credit... Isabel Seliger

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By Nathaniel Rich

• Published Feb. 25, 2024 Updated March 8, 2024

Alyssa Shannon was on her morning commute from Oakland to Sacramento, where she worked as an advanced-practice nurse at the university hospital, when NASA called to tell her that she had been selected for a Mars mission. She screamed and pulled off the highway. As soon as she hung up, she called her partner, an information-security operations manager at the University of California, Berkeley, named Jake Harwood.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“Wow,” Harwood said.

“Yeah,” Shannon said. “Wow.”

They sat in silence with the information, struggling to fathom the shape and weight of it, for a very long time.

Later that morning, Nathan Jones, an emergency-room physician in Springfield, Ill., received the call that he had so fervently awaited and so deeply dreaded. His thoughts turned immediately to his wife, Kacie, and their three sons, who were 8, 10 and 12. You get only 18 years with your kids, he told himself. If you accept this opportunity, you’ll have to give up one of them.

And yet ... he couldn’t possibly turn down NASA. Mars, he had convinced himself, was his destiny. As a child, he dreamed of walking across an alien planet in a state of wonder; he hoped to attend space camp, but his family couldn’t afford it. Once his sons were old enough, he took them to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.

When he told Kacie the news, she nearly burst into tears.

This Mars mission, CHAPEA, would not actually go to Mars. But the success of CHAPEA (“Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog”) will hang on the precision with which it simulates the first human expedition to Mars — an eventuality that NASA expects to occur by 2040.

That people will travel to Mars, and soon, is a widely accepted conviction within NASA. The target date for the initial human mission has drifted slightly — in a 2018 report commissioned by Congress, NASA estimated that the first human beings would land on Mars “no later than the late 2020s” — but the certainty has not wavered, even if technical hurdles remain. Rachel McCauley, until recently the acting deputy director of NASA’s Mars campaign, had, as of July, a punch list of 800 problems that must be solved before the first human mission launches. Many of these concern the mechanical difficulties of transporting people to a planet that is never closer than 33.9 million miles away; keeping them alive on poisonous soil in unbreathable air, bombarded by solar radiation and galactic cosmic rays, without access to immediate communication; and returning them safely to Earth, more than a year and half later. Many other problems involve technical details so arcane that McCauley wouldn’t even know how to begin explaining them to a well-intentioned journalist lacking an advanced engineering degree. But McCauley does not doubt that NASA will overcome these challenges. What NASA does not yet know — what nobody can know — is whether humanity can overcome the psychological torment of Martian life.

Enter CHAPEA. Instead of asking questions about aeroshell sensor design and terrain-relative navigation, it promised to ask questions about people. For 378 days, four ordinary people would enact, as closely as possible, the lives of Martian colonists, receiving directives, feedback and near-total surveillance from mission control. They would eat astronaut food, conduct basic experiments, perform maintenance duties, respond to endless surveys and enjoy highly structured down time. This level of extreme verisimilitude is necessary to ensure that the experiment accurately determines whether human beings can thrive while living millions of miles from everybody they’ve ever known.

Experimenters wanted to learn whether crew members could eat low-salt, prepackaged astronaut meals for hundreds of days without losing their appetite, weight and positive attitude. Whether they could live in harmony with strangers in a confined space. Whether they could preserve a cohesive professional environment when they are out of contact with Earth for as long as three weeks at a time. Such questions are of paramount importance, because no mission to Mars can succeed if its inhabitants cannot maintain their health, their happiness and, most critical of all, their sanity.

And so before NASA can safely judge whether astronauts will thrive on Mars, NASA must first determine whether astronaut-imitators can thrive on a stage set designed, with maximum fidelity, to look like Mars.

“Mars is calling!” began the announcement that NASA published on its website in August 2021. Unlike most NASA missions, CHAPEA was open to the general public, or at least a reasonably broad swath of it: citizens or permanent residents between the ages of 30 and 55 with a master’s degree in a STEM field. Applicants were told to expect the experience to be “mentally demanding.”

Among the not-insignificant percentage of the country that idolizes NASA, this news was tantamount to learning that Willy Wonka would open his mysterious factory to five lucky contest winners. NASA offered four golden tickets to Mars — or rather Mars Dune Alpha, a 1,700-square-foot habitat built inside a warehouse at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The habitat was constructed as future Mars dwellings will be constructed: by 3-D printer. For “ink,” Martian colonies will use Martian regolith. Because NASA does not possess sufficient quantities of Martian rock, CHAPEA used a proprietary, airtight cement-based material called Lavacrete, which extrudes from a 3-D printer layer by layer, like orange toothpaste. (Though Lavacrete can be printed in any color, NASA engineers chose to dye the habitat that peculiar hue of orange misleadingly called “Martian red.”)

At one end of the rectangular habitat, four identical 6-by-11-foot cells serve as bedrooms. In the middle lies the “lounge,” a small room with a television and four reclining chairs. The other end is occupied by several desks with computer monitors, a medical station and a crop garden. The vegetables are not intended for subsistence but for mental health: Growing plants, one CHAPEA researcher said, may “provide psychological benefits for astronauts living in isolated, confined environments away from Earth.” Rooms have different ceiling heights, in order, according to its builder, to “avoid spatial monotony and crew member fatigue.” A hatch opens to a Martian backyard: a tented sandbox of reddish sand and two treadmills, to be used for “spacewalks” by virtual-reality-goggled crew members. The walls of the backyard are painted with a mural of Martian cliffs. There are no windows.

The duration of the experiment is the most glaring violation of verisimilitude. Orbital geometries dictate that the shortest possible round-trip mission to Mars will last about 570 days, a scenario possible once every 15 years, next in 2033; a typical Martian tour of duty will last at least 800 days.

To preserve the integrity of the experiment, NASA has refused to disclose any additional details about what the crew will experience during their 378-day confinement, which will end on July 6, 2024. NASA has emphasized only that participants will experience “resource limitations, equipment failure, communication delays and other environmental stressors.” But if Alyssa Shannon and Nathan Jones were to take NASA at its word about its dedication to realism, they could assume that certain conditions would have to be present. Crew members on a mission to Mars will, for instance, have to form durable emotional bonds with total strangers, relying on them for the comforts and consolations of the relationships they abandoned on Earth. Crew members will have to respond to every emergency themselves, without the possibility of intervention, or even guidance, from a mission command too distant to reply promptly to an S.O.S. They would have to come to terms with their inability to care for a sick child, comfort an upset spouse or visit a dying parent.

Future Mars voyagers will not only have to tolerate these conditions. In order to win the privilege of long-distance space travel, they will have to pursue the opportunity with devout, single-minded purpose. They will have to want to travel to Mars more than almost anyone else in the world. They will have to embrace the knowledge that, for at least 570 days, they will be the most isolated human beings in the history of the universe.

Alyssa Shannon had fantasized about colonizing Mars since childhood. She spent weeks on the floor of her bedroom playing with a Lego spaceship that converted into a Martian base station. Later she read Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles,” James S.A. Corey’s Expanse series and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy — any Martian sci-fi she could find. She knew she could tolerate hardship and extended periods in isolation: She was an avid backpacker, having hiked the John Muir Trail in 23 days and trekked across Spain in 40. She would miss cooking — her specialty was whole-wheat sourdough pizza — but she was willing to sacrifice her culinary passion in service of humanity’s future. Her partner, Jake, understood. Her decision to apply, he said, “reaffirmed what I knew about her: When it comes time to do something important, requiring a major commitment, she’s the kind of person who will follow through.” While she waited to hear back from NASA, Alyssa didn’t discuss it much: The prospect was almost too exciting to bear.

Nathan Jones, the father of three, told his identical twin, Matthew, that he felt the mission had been designed for him — and that he had been made for the mission. Matthew agreed. Nathan could talk to anyone and seemed to solve any problem he faced. He had spent years as a night-shift paramedic, saving lives in the backs of speeding ambulances. He had volunteered on medical missions in the jungles of Honduras, treating health emergencies for members of remote Indigenous tribes without being able to speak their language (or, for that matter, much Spanish). Jones was the emergency specialist in his household too, responsible for repairing every leak, dysfunctional appliance and clogged toilet. He figured he could handle Mars — or, at least, “Mars.”

Kacie, his wife, wasn’t certain she could handle it. When Nathan announced that he had applied, she was dumbfounded. Why, she asked, would you choose to leave our family for a year?

Another version of this question was posed by various professional observers of the American space program: the historians, ethicists and NASA consultants who spend much of their professional lives imagining the future of space exploration and planetary colonization. What, they wondered, did NASA hope to learn from CHAPEA that it did not know already?

The psychic perils of separation from one’s social world are well understood. “Don’t we already know what isolation does to people?” asks J.S. Johnson-Schwartz, a professor of philosophy at Wichita State University who studies the ethics of space exploration. “What uncertainty exists about what’s going to happen when you lock people inside a room for a year? Just because the room is painted to look like Mars doesn’t mean it’s going to change the results.”

The findings to which Johnson-Schwartz referred were from the last 80 years of isolation research, a field of study initiated during World War II, when the British Royal Air Force grew concerned about pilots’ performance during solo reconnaissance flights. Officers noticed that the longer a pilot stayed in the air, the fewer German submarines he detected. The psychologist Norman Mackworth determined that the monotony of the mission was responsible. But inattention wasn’t the worst of it: Monotony weakened the pilots’ competence in even the most basic tasks.

Mackworth’s conclusions inspired a series of studies by the psychologist Donald O. Hebb at McGill University in Montreal, in which male students earned $20 a day to lie on a bed in a lighted, soundproofed gray cubicle. Hebb confirmed Mackworth’s findings and added a disturbing new wrinkle. Monotony didn’t only cause intellectual impairment. It led to “change of attitude.”

At first Hebb’s students slept a lot and ruminated on their studies and their personal problems. Later they fell into reminiscences, recreating movies they had watched or trips they had taken. Some counted to incredibly large numbers. Eventually, however, they lost the ability to focus. Several students reported “blank periods” during which they did not have a single thought.

Next came the hallucinations: a procession of marching squirrels hauling sacks over their shoulders. Nude women frolicking in a woodland pool. Giant eyeglasses marching down a street. An old man wearing a battle helmet in a bathtub rolling across a field on rubber wheels. Dogs, endless dogs. One student complained of a phantom “sucking my mind out through my eyes.” The delusions made the students vulnerable to manipulation. When played recordings about ghosts, poltergeists and ESP, they were far more likely to believe such phenomena were real, even long after the experiment ended.

Hebb’s findings inspired a boom of isolation studies. Subjects were confined within iron lungs, water tanks and subterranean caves; the results were consistent. “These experiments were extremely useful to many different people,” says Jeffrey Mathias, a historian of science at Cornell University, who is writing a book about the history of isolation research. Besides attracting neuroscientists and psychologists, the research also drew the interest, and funding, of the U.S. intelligence community. The C.I.A. incorporated findings into their practice of “coercive counterintelligence interrogation,” or what today might be called “brainwashing” or “torture.”

The isolation studies were also closely monitored by the Air Force, which directed the nascent U.S. space program before the creation of NASA in 1958. Worried that spaceflight might drive astronauts insane, the Air Force conducted the first iteration of a CHAPEA-like experiment at the Air Force’s School of Aeronautic Medicine in San Antonio in 1955. Prospective astronauts were enclosed for a week within a spaceship cockpit slightly larger than a coffin perpetually illuminated by bright fluorescent lights. The airmen were assigned an overwhelming number of technical tasks and, in some cases, given huge doses of amphetamines.

Their experience followed a familiar trajectory: Initial high spirits gave way to what one researcher called a “gradual increase in irritability,” which abruptly flipped into “frank hostility.” Many participants, including a few who hadn’t taken speed, hallucinated. One pilot saw “little people” perched on the instrument panel. “I can’t say if I thought they were alive or not,” he said. “I really don’t know.” Another pilot abandoned the experiment after three hours and demanded psychiatric care.

Similar studies followed — in blackened anechoic chambers and pill-shaped capsules dangling from high-altitude balloons — before the entire line of inquiry was put to rest by Project Mercury. During the successful solo missions that marked the formal start of the American space program in the early 1960s, astronauts did not suffer from any obvious psychological distress, placating Hebb’s researchers. All future long-duration expeditions remained in Earth’s orbit, allowing crew to communicate easily with family and friends; the International Space Station flies about as far from Earth as Manhattan is from Washington. Although government agencies, particularly those concerned about crew performance aboard nuclear submarines, continue to examine the effects of isolation, NASA did not.

NASA had not solved the problem of isolation in outer space. It realized it did not need to solve it. At least not until half a century later, when a new challenge presented itself: a human mission to a planet so distant that a cry for help would have to travel through the solar system for 22 minutes before it was heard.

It was the lag in communication that particularly worried the partners and families of the CHAPEA crew. All contact with the habitat would be delayed by the amount of time that it would take to beam information hundreds of millions of miles from Earth to Mars. Even the tersest exchange (“How’s it going?” “OK.”) would take 44 minutes.

But 44 minutes was the best-case scenario, because any communication will have to flow through a single node. Every unit of information — not just messages but surveillance footage, audio recordings, experimental and biostatic records — will have to wait its turn in a digital queue, with precedence given to the most urgent signals and the smallest packets of data. The upshot was that anything approaching a normal human conversation with an Earthling was unthinkable. The most modest digital postcard — a short, grainy video of a child blowing out a birthday candle — might take weeks to arrive. And during one three-week period in the middle of the experiment, representing the farthest distance (more than 250 million miles) between the two planets, there would be no contact at all.

Alyssa Shannon’s partner, Jake, the cybersecurity expert, dedicated himself to gaming the digital traffic snarl. “I have to figure out how to make sure my stuff goes faster than everyone else,” he said. “I know enough about tech to get the lowest bit rate possible. The lowest-grade image quality will travel faster. Black and white instead of color. I need to calculate the smallest transmittable unit that’s still me, smiling.”

Nathan Jones emphasized to NASA’s experimenters that he wanted to be kept as busy as possible. He didn’t want too much idle time to worry about his wife and their sons — how, when they were having tough days, he wouldn’t be able to give them “Dad hugs.” He didn’t want to dwell on the lost band performances, piano recitals, cross-country meets and soccer games, or about how his oldest son might be six inches taller by the end of his Martian sojourn. Nor did he care to consider what his friends in central Illinois, who responded to the news of his mission with bafflement and concern, might think. “That’s been the hardest part,” he said. “Their jaws hit the floor. They ask Kacie: ‘Why would you let your husband do this? How are you going to be OK?’ This looks crazy to a lot of people. Maybe it is. It’s not the kind of thing folks around here do.”

Kacie alternated among feelings of anger, fear, grief, defeatism, pride and resolve. There were times when she told Nathan that he shouldn’t go or that she wouldn’t let him go. “As a mother,” she said, “I don’t know that I could even consider leaving my children for a year.” But ultimately she was won over by his enthusiasm.

In the months before the crew was sealed within the habitat — the moment of “ingress,” NASA called it — Nathan threw himself into an extensive “Honey do” list. He worked in the backyard garden, planting tomatoes, cucumbers, blackberries, melons and strawberries for his family to harvest in his absence. He taught them how to garden and weed and clip the hedges. After he left for his final month of training in Houston, Kacie noticed that her sons would stand in the yard and survey the plot with their hands on their hips, in subconscious mimicry of their father.

Nathan also renovated two bathrooms, reconstructed the family car’s carburetor, replaced fixtures and trimmed the lower branches of the pine trees. He gave Kacie the passwords to their accounts and detailed directions on how to file their taxes. He taught her how to use the chain saw. He paid a professional photographer to take a family portrait and over spring break splurged for a Disney cruise. He drafted birthday and holiday cards, gifts and letters for every month (“We’re halfway there!”; “One month to go!”). He hid additional Post-it notes under couch cushions and under mattresses, or in places that Kacie might encounter in moments of stress, like the circuit breaker. “You can do it,” he wrote on the note he hid inside his toolbox. “You got this.”

A final envelope he addressed to Kacie, to open on their 15th wedding anniversary.

Jones and Shannon respected NASA’s discretion about the mission. But if they had wanted better to imagine the next year of their lives, they could have read up on a previous series of Mars simulations that shared some of CHAPEA’s objectives. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) experiment was conducted with NASA funding between 2013 and 2017 in a domed habitat on the reddish slope of the Mauna Loa volcano, 3,000 feet below the observatory there that keeps a continuous measurement of the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Civilians were selected to live inside the habitat for as long as 12 months at a time. HI-SEAS studied the nutritional and “psychosocial” benefits of various meal plans, as well as the volunteers’ behavior and mental acuity and the coping strategies they developed to withstand confined isolation.

“Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars,” a memoir-in-essays by Kate Greene, one of HI-SEAS’ original crew members, includes chapters titled “On Boredom,” “On Isolation” and “Dreams of Mars, Dreams of Earth.” Greene describes how the crushing monotony of the mission changed her. “Somewhere along the way,” she writes, “mental fatigue had become my baseline state.” The crew had difficulty sleeping, were disturbed by the constant monitoring and recording and found that the scheduled leisure time “felt a little forced.” Minor irritations began to madden Greene: the sound of sandals on the stairs, the way a crew member grazed her shin when crossing her leg under the table. She found herself desperately missing quotidian aspects of life on Earth, where she left behind her wife, aging parents and an ailing brother. The smell of fresh pineapple, in a routine sensory test, was enough to make her cry.

HI-SEAS followed Mars500 , the longest Mars simulation yet attempted. Administered by Russia’s ingenuously nomenclatured Institute of Biomedical Problems, Mars500 locked six male crew members together for 520 days, between June 2010 and November 2011, in a faux spacecraft and a faux landing module, and on a faux Mars. The Russian experimenters had hypothesized that, over time, the astronauts would lose motivation, work less effectively and suffer intensifying feelings of isolation from family and friends. After the experiment concluded, the scientists announced that their hypotheses had been “largely confirmed.” Crew members lost trust in the commanders and mission control when communications grew less frequent, developed nutritional problems and grew homesick and depressed. “The 520 days are really not easy to get through,” Wang Yue, a Chinese participant who lost 22 pounds and much of his hair, told China Daily. “It’s impossible to stay happy all the time. After all, I’m human, not a robot.”

Despite the consistency of results, the appetite for Mars simulations appears insatiable. CHAPEA is one of more than a dozen current analogue experiments NASA is participating in, including HERA, a 650-square-foot habitat that regularly houses four participants for as long as 45 days in confined isolation. Since NASA ended its participation in HI-SEAS, a conglomerate of public and private organizations has staged 12 additional missions on Mauna Loa. For nearly a quarter-century, the nonprofit Mars Society has directed research stations in the Utah desert and on a remote island in northern Canada. Mars analogues have been conducted on Dome C of the Antarctic Plateau, in a semiarid tract of northeastern Brazil, in the northern Sahara, within Austria’s Dachstein ice caves and in the Dhofar region in the Sultanate of Oman.

“We’ve seen similar things happen many times,” acknowledges Kelly C. Smith, a philosopher at Clemson University who specializes in the ethics of space exploration and advises NASA, which has no ethicists on staff. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a waste of time. The stakes are higher than in the past, after all. We’re doing this because we’re planning missions to other worlds.”

It is likely that the first travelers to Mars will have a similar psychological profile to that of Shannon, Jones and the two other participants selected by NASA for the crew: Ross Brockwell, a public-works operations manager in Chesapeake, Va., and Kelly Haston, a stem-cell biologist in the San Francisco Bay Area. All four were not only NASA enthusiasts and in perfect physical health but habitually sought out extended periods of isolation. Brockwell routinely retreated to a camp he had built on undeveloped land in Virginia, living off the grid. Haston is an ultramarathoner, having run some 70 trail races in the last decade, including several hundred-milers. Loneliness was something she had read about in books but never, as far as she could recall, experienced. A passion for isolation might have been as important to NASA’s screening process as educational attainment and blood glucose levels.

The CHAPEA participants should further benefit from their devotion to the cause. Louise Hawkley, an expert on social isolation at the University of Chicago, emphasizes that psychological responses are heavily influenced by whether people choose isolation or have it thrust upon them. A prisoner sentenced to life would be expected to suffer more than a monk who takes a vow of silence. But Hawkley points out that the participants’ loved ones, however supportive they might be, lacked the same autonomy: “Even if the crew member is fine, what happens to the family left behind?” Hawkley wondered if NASA will study the psychological effects of the mission on the families.

It will not. Nor did CHAPEA’s architects seem to have a strong grasp of the history of isolation research. In interviews, they discounted the predictive value of previous experiments, including HI-SEAS. “I don’t believe they were doing the performance metrics that we’re doing,” says Grace Douglas, CHAPEA’s principal investigator, who admitted she wasn’t “fully familiar” with the previous four-year experiment. “Our metrics are going to be at a higher level of detail and more extensive. The resource plan is more accurate.”

Rachel McCauley was the NASA official responsible for funding CHAPEA. When asked what she hoped to learn about human psychology, she dismissed the premise of the question. “The big reason why I funded it,” she said, “is because I need an even more refined answer to the question, How much food does it really take for a Mars mission?”

What about the mission’s psychological aspect? The monotony? The loneliness?

“I’m a hardware person first,” McCauley said. She is, to be precise, a solid-propulsion systems engineer. She has the distinction of being the member of our species who has been most responsible for determining the best method to catapult humanity to Mars. In order to do so, she had to know how much weight a spaceship will carry. McCauley could estimate, down to the milligram, the mass of every nut and bolt, every antivortex baffle and cargo-bay door. But how many corn tortillas and yogurt packets will four astronauts, under psychological duress, consume in 378 days? That question, or some version of it, was what McCauley needed answered. She also needed to know how much clothing they’ll need. Clothes are heavy.

Mathias, the isolation historian, was not surprised to learn that the psychological questions were a secondary consideration for NASA. But his skepticism about CHAPEA went further. Mathias questioned whether any experimental rationale could justify yet another isolation study. “I wonder if the scientific value of these simulation experiments is beside the point,” he said. The experiments, instead, seemed to him “a way of willing the colonization of Mars into being. A form of wish fulfillment — or cosplaying, to put it less poetically. This is about satisfying an urge. There seems to be a compulsion to keep repeating these fake Mars missions until we actually do it. There’s something very beautiful about this idea, but also very macabre at the same time.”

The analogue experiments reflect the utopian promise of our Martian future. For a human mission to Mars is not the highest ambition of the space program. It is just the beginning, a small step for mankind before the giant leap of planetary colonization.

Five months before CHAPEA’s call for applications, Dennis Bushnell, then chief scientist at NASA Langley Research Center and a nearly 60-year veteran of NASA, published “Futures of Deep Space Exploration, Commercialization and Colonization: The Frontiers of the Responsibly Imaginable.” Martian colonization has always been imaginable, particularly to this nation of colonizers. But in his paper Bushnell noted that the prospect has in recent years “moved from extremely difficult to increasingly feasible.” Colonization has also become increasingly desirable, because of “possibly existential societal issues, including climate change, the crashing ecosystem, machines taking the jobs, etc.” — the et cetera perhaps reflective of the obviousness of planetary decline.

A more surprising aspect of the paper is Bushnell’s prediction for how the physical hostility of Mars will be overcome: Colonists will “morph into an altered species.” He cites projections that suggest that “travelers that colonize Mars will, over time, due to the reduced g and radiation exposure, evolve into Martians.” The ultimate promise of NASA’s Mars mission is the chance to begin again — if not, exactly, as human beings, then as Martians.

There is a beautiful and macabre poetry to this rationalization. “Utopia,” after all, derives from the Greek: ou (“not”) and topos (“place”). If we manage to inhabit the not-place of Mars, enjoying a carefree life of not-problems, not-regret and not-environmental-ruin, it makes sense that we should be not-people. We should be Martians. Let people, with all their baggage and fragility and foolishness, stay home.

Mathias likened the incessant Mars analogue experiments to a traumatic repetition: a compulsion to restage a trauma in an irrational, futile attempt to undo a profound damage. “The urge to try to recreate a perfect world is always going to be about rehearsing what we got wrong here,” he said. “We’re not chasing Mars. We’re mourning Earth.”

In late May, a month before sealing themselves within the habitat, the four crew members and two alternates reported to Houston for a final month of training and evaluation. Three weeks before the ingress, NASA hosted a “family weekend” for the crew’s loved ones. The visitors were given a tour of the Johnson Space Center. They met a real astronaut, saw replicas of spaceships, walked around in the red sandbox that crew members would use for their “spacewalks” and asked questions directly of CHAPEA’s lead researcher, Grace Douglas. The three Jones boys were proud to learn how their father was helping to shape the future of humanity.

But the most valuable part of the weekend, the families agreed, was the chance to meet one another. During a barbecue by the hotel pool, they shared their anxieties about the coming year. They exchanged techniques for managing stress and pledged to keep in close contact through a private Facebook page.

On Jake Harwood’s final evening in Houston, Alyssa Shannon prepared a shrimp salad in the hotel kitchenette. It was bittersweet: the last meal she would fix in more than a year. Before leaving Oakland, she had frozen about a dozen feasts for Jake and their friends to enjoy during her absence. She would miss cooking. There would be no pizza on Mars.

The couple gazed out the window at a full moon. There would be 13 more, Jake told her, before she returned from Mars. He would be counting down the full moons until they saw each other again.

They awoke at dawn and watched the sun rise. Alyssa drove him to the airport. “It was hard to say goodbye,” Jake said, if not as hard, he anticipated, as their final phone call before the ingress, which he referred to as the “big one.” But Alyssa’s final phone call from Houston came five days earlier than he expected.

Alyssa announced that NASA had removed her from the mission. The investigators pulled her into a room and told her that she had been “excluded from continuing.” She would be replaced by one of the alternates, Anca Selariu, a microbiologist in the U.S. Navy. Alyssa did not know why she had been removed. The investigators refused to tell her, she said. They said only that their decision had not been based on her performance. They added that sometimes, in the final tests before a mission, they found something that was not “medically serious” but might present a hazard. Like an increased risk of kidney stones.

“Do I have an increased risk of kidney stones?” Alyssa asked.

Kidney stones was just an example, the investigators insisted. But they refused to say more, lest they compromise the integrity of the experiment.

Alyssa doubted that she had been torpedoed by a medical condition. She wondered instead if she wasn’t “exactly the right mix of introvert and extrovert they were seeking.” Or perhaps they had grown concerned about the crew’s social dynamic? If so, Alyssa couldn’t say why. The investigators, she said, told her that she could make up any excuse she wanted, and they wouldn’t deny it. “But lying is so unsatisfying,” she said. “And you have to remember the lie. It’s too challenging. I want to go to the truth. There was a reason, and they couldn’t tell me what it was.”

The uncertainty plagued her, but not as much as the loss she felt from the death of a dream she had nurtured since the Lego Martian colonies of her childhood. She couldn’t help feeling wounded. “This has been hard on my ego,” she said. “It’s a big upheaval. It’s been uncomfortable.” She sighed. “But I have to trust that my departure is for the best of the mission. By stepping back I’m just serving in a different way.”

Her sudden banishment led to some logistical awkwardness at home. “When an astronaut comes back,” Kate Greene wrote, “Earth isn’t where it was.” When Alyssa came back, she found herself suddenly without a job, income or home. Her hospital had promised her a position in 13 months, but in the meantime someone had been hired to replace her. Nor would NASA pay her the full stipend she had been promised, which she says was about $60,000. She didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. And she had rented her apartment for a year. Though she knew she would be able to move in with Jake, they hadn’t previously decided to live together.

Jake could not disguise his excitement. He met her at the airport and brought her to his house, where they shared a pizza.

Alyssa, an indefatigable optimist, began brainstorming over dinner. Perhaps she would use the sudden windfall of free time to set out on a major backpacking adventure or a cross-country road trip. Maybe she would begin a new career. Or maybe she wouldn’t go back to work — ever. Jake listened, humoring her. Then, with great tenderness, he proposed that she take a couple of weeks to herself before deciding what to do with the rest of her life.

On the afternoon of Sunday, June 25, the couple opened NASA’s YouTube channel. The four crew members stood on a platform in front of the habitat. They wore black jumpsuits embossed with the reddish CHAPEA mission patch: Mars Dune Alpha, rendered not inside a Houston warehouse but at the foot of a Martian sierra, the same mountain range painted on the wall of the sandbox.

“The knowledge we gain here will help enable us to send humans to Mars and bring them home safely,” Grace Douglas said. The crew members expressed their gratitude to NASA. When Anca Selariu said, “I just can’t believe that I’m here,” Alyssa teared up.

As soon as Nathan Jones began speaking about his family, he broke down. Kelly Haston patted his shoulder. “To my wife and kids,” he finally said, through a sob, “I love you to Mars and back.”

Douglas opened the door to the habitat. It was not a special hatch with airlocks or anything: It was just a plain white office door. The crew, waving, entered. Douglas shut the door firmly behind them.

From inside the sealed habitat, the crew could be heard whooping with joy.

In Springfield, Kacie Jones was watching with her sons. She had felt it was important that she be alone with the boys, without any extended family, not knowing how they would respond to the sight of their father leaving for a year. In the end, the boys were fine. Kacie was not. But about 22 minutes after the habitat door closed, she received a text message. It came from Mars.

“I love you,” Nathan wrote.

Kacie took a deep breath. “We’re finally in it,” she told herself. “Which means now we can move forward.” She took the boys for tacos, put them to sleep and set the alarm clock so that she had enough time, in the morning, to get them ready for camp.

At Jake’s house in Oakland, after Alyssa closed the laptop, there was a moment in which they did not know what to do with themselves. They figured Alyssa’s family would worry about her, so she put on a costume spacesuit and dressed Bun Bun, a stuffed rabbit that she had planned to bring to Fake Mars, in a tiny NASA spacesuit. Jake snapped portraits and sent them to her family to let them know she was all right. Or at least that, once the sting of missing out on a year on Mars had subsided, she would be all right. That staying on Earth, with her recipe collections and Bun Bun and her devoted partner, might not be such a terrible outcome after all.

Then she baked a whole-wheat sourdough pizza, and she and Jake ate it, together.

Nathaniel Rich, a contributing writer for the magazine, is the author, most recently, of “Second Nature: Scenes From a World Remade.” Isabel Seliger is an artist and illustrator in Berlin. She often illustrates science articles with narrative elements.

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If we successfully land on Mars, could we live there?

It seems like everyone has Mars on the mind these days. NASA wants to send humans to the red planet by 2030, and SpaceX wants to get there even sooner, with plans to have people there by 2024.

Mars is a favorite theme in Hollywood, with movies like The Martian and this year’s Life exploring what we might find once we finally reach our celestial neighbor, but most of them aren’t addressing the biggest questions — once we get there, how will we survive long-term?

The atmosphere of Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, the surface of the planet is too cold to sustain human life, and the planet’s gravity is a mere 38% of Earth’s. Plus, the atmosphere on Mars is equivalent to about 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. That makes getting to the surface tricky. How will NASA get there? How can we hope to survive against such odds?

Landing Ideas: Then and Now

Traveling to Mars is just the first leg of the journey — when Earth and Mars are closest to each other, the trip will take a mere 260 days. Once we get there, the challenge becomes landing on the planet’s surface. What type of landing system will get our astronauts and colonists safely to the surface?

Back in 2007, scientists considered four possible solutions to get astronauts to the surface. One idea was a Legged Landing System based off the Lunar Lander. This system could provide the option to both land and take off from the red planet. Secondly, the SLS System, or Sky-Crane Landing System, would use population systems to lower rovers and other equipment onto the surface. This system can unload cargo and take off again. The third design discussed was an Air Bag Landing System, which would rely on a rocket that cuts its thrust above the surface of the planet as well as an air bag for the equipment to land on. However, this wouldn’t be the best option for people. Lastly, scientists considered Touchdown Sensing. Equipment senses the surface and the landing site, and compensates accordingly.

Ten years later, scientists have other ideas on how to land manned missions to Mars. According to Richard (Rick) McGuire Davis, Jr., Assistant Director for Science and Exploration and co-leader of the Mars Human Landing Sites Study at NASA, “landers will have to dive deep into the Martian atmosphere and skirt closer to the surface than we have done in the past… [since] the Martian atmosphere is thickest near the surface.” When asked about the previous methods of technology mentioned above he said, “The lander is so heavy that many technologies will not work, such as airbags, sky-cranes and parachutes. In fact, to slow down, we will be heavily reliant on jets.” How heavy will the crewed missions be? This supersonic retro-propulsion technology is required to be able to deliver the “projected 20 metric ton” spacecraft to the surface of Mars. For comparison, the Curiosity rover was only 1 metric ton.

Once we make it to Mars, what comes next?

Habitation Built to Last

NASA is already considering what kind of habitation we’ll need to survive on the surface of Mars. Six companies began designing possible habitat prototypes in 2016, with completed prototypes expected in 24 months.

All these habitats will likely have a few things in common — they have to be self-sustaining, sealed against the thin atmosphere, and capable of supporting life for extended periods without support from Earth. To get an idea for what to expect, think about the ISS. “The International Space Station has really taught us a tremendous amount of what is needed in a deep space habitat,” said Davis. “We’ll need things like environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS), power systems, docking ports, [and] air locks so that crew can perform space walks to repair things that break or to add new capabilities.” Expect big robust equipment to travel across the stars to Mars during the first manned mission. Whatever the astronauts use must be up for the long journey.

Davis also posed an interesting question: how much space is needed for each crewmember? Could you imagine spending months in one location, surrounded by the same walls day in and day out? How far apart would they have to be to keep claustrophobia at bay? “In the days of the Space Shuttle, missions ran for 7-15 days, and there was not a lot of space for each crewmember. In a space station, where crewmembers are onboard for a much longer time (typically 6 months), we have found that crewmembers simply need more space.”  Based on this logic, it’s possible that habitable bases on Mars will require more square footage for inhabitants.

Science fiction also does a great job helping the public imagine what this future mission will look like. The recent film The Martian , portrayed the kind of habitats NASA is investigating for a Mars. Nine pieces of technology showcased in the movie are accurate to the kind of equipment astronauts on the planet will use.

Keeping the food and medicine supplies stocked on Mars is the best way to make a habitat self-sustaining, but with a thin atmosphere and reduced sunlight, it can be difficult to get anything to grow. Artificial leaves, designed to work in harsh conditions , could offer a solution for first aid.

These leaves, made of silicone rubber, can take a little bit of sunlight and turn it into enough power to fuel the necessary chemical reactions to make medicine and other compounds. Lead researcher Tim Noel, assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology said, “[The] device harvests solar energy and re-emits it to a wavelength region which is useful for the chemistry within the channels. [It has the ability to make the] reaction conditions…uniform wherever you are.”

In other words, it can use sunlight during the day on Mars, even though it is potentially exposed to more harmful UV rays. The channels inside the leaf are protected because your device can re-emit the energy it collects at a safer wavelength, which allows any chemical processes to take place. “This could be helpful when the irradiation on a certain planet is too energetic. [Since] light is basically everywhere … [theoretically] you can use that energy to start making the required molecules, whether they are pharmaceuticals, agrochemcials or solar fuels.”

Right now, methylene blue is being used as the photocatalyst to produce drugs. A catalyst’s job is to speed up a reaction, so the methylene blue allows the scientists to produce drugs faster than they could without it. Tim and his team are working hard now to make a diverse set of reactors. They hope to have the device onboard for the trip to Mars. Nature has given us the perfect tools to survive nearly anywhere. They just need a little bit of tweaking to survive off Earth.

Terraforming: It Won’t Be Quite Like the Movies at First

When you think of astronauts on Mars, what comes to mind? Did you picture a red planet turning green with time and continued human colonization? Unfortunately, those days are far in the future, if they even happen at all.  During the interview, Davis explained, “Terraforming has a connotation of humans making another planetary body, like Mars, Earth-like. But really, it’s about humans changing their environment to make it more supportive of our need.”  What does this mean?

The first few trips to Mars will only include the essentials. One of NASA’s first goals for its astronauts is to learn how to live on the planet. Since it differs greatly from Earth, survival is an important skill for astronauts to master. “The initial base will probably include a habitat and a science lab. [The inside of] these modules will be much like the space station, but there will be differences.” One example Davis gave included preventing toxic dust from getting into the habitat and lab. Microbial life is another threat to astronauts. Without more research on the planet, NASA can’t say for certain what dangers could threaten human life. With this in mind, all scientists involved with the Mars mission will take these and other potential risks under consideration.

After the NASA base is well established and the astronauts learned survival basics, things get more interesting. “Eventually, since it costs so much to send things from Earth, we will want to farm on Mars. Such a farm will really be green houses to protect the plants against the challenging Martian environment,” said Davis. Keep in mind the Martian soil isn’t like the soil on Earth.  It lacks organics “[the] rotting biological materials that plants need.” Fortunately, it contains the minerals they require. Davis said that his team calls this soil regolith and it will need to be cleansed of some toxic materials. And NASA scientists can get the job done.

Detoxified soil isn’t the only thing astronauts will need to grow plants. They’ll also need to utilize the water from Mar’s ice-capped poles. Davis said, “Many anticipate that the first human base will be located adjacent to these billion-year-old ice deposits, so that humans can easily produce the volumes of water that they will need to support water intensive activities like farming.” As of yet there is no word about which pole will be more beneficial, if there’s a difference at all.

Before speaking to Davis, I believed that future Martian farms would be equivalent to greenhouses here on Earth. It seemed logical. That’s how people control plant growth here. However, while the plants will need a higher pressure to grow, the plants “[don’t] have to be [at] an Earth-like pressure. In fact, we can pressurize the greenhouse with carbon dioxide, which is the main component of the Martian atmosphere.” This sounds like a win-win for both the scientists and the plants. Instead of the astronauts having to wear cumbersome space suits, they could “just wear lightweight oxygen masks” in the greenhouses. The key takeaway is that the planet doesn’t have to transform into Earth2.0. Maybe one day it will, but for the time being, it just has to function for NASA scientists to live and work.

Time Will Tell

Mars has captured the imagination of humans for decades. These plans are just the next step in the process of getting the Mars Mission from the ‘drawing room floor’ to a funded mission with a launch date. NASA isn’t the only ones with their eyes on Mars. Others are already coming up with their own plans for the red planet. Scientists and enthusiasts have speculated on everything from nuking the planet into habitability to creating a magnetic shield around the planet to encourage it to ‘grow’ its own atmosphere.

Mars is hopefully just our first step into the universe. Once we’ve dipped our toes out into the solar system, it will be easier to expand out into the asteroid belt and beyond. Mars’ low gravity provides the perfect platform for constructing and launching other deep space vehicles. After we’ve got that foothold, the only thing holding us back is our technology. As it is technology is the Achilles heel of the mission now. We might have a way to get to Mars before we have a means of safe exploration.

Those of us who have grown up watching the Apollo missions, space shuttles take-off and now the Falcon rockets climbing through the atmosphere likely won’t see Mars colonized in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t negate the wonder we all feel every time one of those rockets soars into the sky. It’s not just a rocket, but a source of inspiration for generations to come – one of which will step foot on Martian soil.

Megan Ray Nichols is a freelance science writer and the editor of Schooled By Science. When she isn’t writing, Megan enjoys hiking, swimming and going to the movies. She invites you to follow her on LinkedIn and subscribe to her blog here .

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Why go to Mars?

Mars is an obvious target for exploration because it is close by in our Solar System, but there are many more reasons to explore the Red Planet. The scientific reasons for going to Mars can be summarised by the search for life, understanding the surface and the planet’s evolution, and preparing for future human exploration.

Searching for life on Mars Understanding whether life existed elsewhere in the Universe beyond Earth is a fundamental question of humankind. Mars is an excellent place to investigate this question because it is the most similar planet to Earth in the Solar System. Evidence suggests that Mars was once full of water, warmer and had a thicker atmosphere, offering a potentially habitable environment.

Understanding the surface of Mars and its evolution

While life arose and evolved on Earth, Mars experienced serious climate change. Planetary geologists can study rocks, sediments and soils for clues to uncover the history of the surface. Scientists are interested in the history of water on Mars to understand how life could have survived. Volcanoes, craters from meteoroid impacts, signs of atmospheric or photochemical effects and geophysical processes all carry aspects of Mars’ history.

Samples of the atmosphere could reveal crucial details on its formation and evolution, and also why Mars has less atmosphere than Earth.

Mars can also help us to learn more about our home. Understanding martian geophysical processes promises to uncover details of the evolution and history of Earth and other planets in our Solar System.

Human exploration

To reduce the cost and risk for human exploration of Mars, robotic missions can scout ahead and help us to find potential resources and the risks of working on the planet.

Before sending astronauts, we need to understand the hazards. Inevitably, astronauts would bring uncontained martian material when they return to Earth, either on their equipment or on themselves. Understanding any biohazards in the soil and dust will help the planning and preparation of these future missions.

Going to Mars is hard and it is even harder for humans because we would need to pack everything to survive the trip to our neighbouring planet and back. Designing a Mars mission would be easier if we could use resources that are already available locally. Water is a valuable resource for human expeditions, both to consume by astronauts and for fuel. Samples gathered by robots could help to evaluate where potential resources are available for future human explorers and how to exploit them.

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Chapter 5 Mars in the Future

"The planet Mars," writes Robert Zubrin, "is a world of breathtaking scenery, with spectacular mountains three times as tall as Mount Everest, canyons three times as deep and five times as long as the Grand Canyon, vast ice fields, and thousands of kilometers of mysterious dry riverbeds. Its unexplored surface may hold unimagined riches and resources for future humanity, as well as answers to some of the deepest philosophical questions that thinking men and women have pondered for millennia. . . . But all that Mars holds will forever remain beyond our grasp unless and until men and women walk its rugged landscapes." 34

In one paragraph, Zubrin explains why human exploration of Mars is such an important aspect of any future space exploration. Only humans have the ability to see, feel, and touch the red planet, ponder their surroundings, and draw conclusions based on their discoveries. Though it is true that scientists have gained a wealth of knowledge from space missions, until human beings can travel to Mars and explore it for themselves, many of its mysteries will forever remain unsolved.

Futuristic Views

During the 1950s, von Braun wrote a series of articles for a popular magazine called Collier's. He told of his ambitious plans for Mars exploration, but he also cautioned that because of all the unknowns, the journey would not be possible for nearly a century. By the end of ten years, however, he had formed an entirely different conclusion. In an article written for a November 1965 issue of Astronautics & Aeronautics , von Braun stated that a manned mission to Mars would be possible by the year 1982, and he urged that such a mission be considered a high priority:

You will have gathered from my paper here that I am an optimist with respect to our space program. However, even if those pessimists should prevail with their gloomy predictions that science has brought mankind close to the abyss, and that it's only a short time before man will blow himself up on this planet, let me suggest that even that seems to indicate that we should pursue this course of going to Mars. In fact, we should indeed hurry, so that we can establish a foothold on a new planet as long as we have one left to take off from. 36

In 1969 von Braun made a formal presentation to NASA in which he explained in great detail his plans for a human expedition to Mars. He was highly regarded by government officials because of his role in developing the Saturn V , an enormous rocket that launched the crew of America's first mission to the moon. In his Mars presentation, von Braun expressed his belief that "the next frontier is manned exploration of the planets." 37 Of course, 1982 came and went and no humans set foot on Mars. But according to Platoff, von Braun's theories were inspiring to scientists, and his work was a major influence on NASA's overall long-term plan for human interplanetary missions: "Basic elements of von Braun's Mars Project—such as the use of reusable shuttle-like ferry vessels, orbital assembly, and multiple spacecraft to reach Mars—continued to show up in proposals for human journeys to the Red Planet." 38

Human Explorers Versus Robots

Even though von Braun died in 1977, his passion and enthusiasm for human Mars exploration is still very much alive today. Aside from the excitement of such a mission, the main reason scientists feel strongly about sending humans to Mars is rather simple: People have capabilities that machines do not. Even with today's advanced technology, there are limitations to what robots can do, and robots rely solely on people to think for them by providing precise, detailed instructions. For instance, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have mechanical arms to lift rocks and soil off the ground, instruments to analyze the material, and cameras to take high-quality photographs. But they cannot actually see or feel what they have found or make judgments about it. They do not have human intelligence, intuition, or reasoning ability, nor do they have life experience that could help them make decisions or form conclusions. If their surroundings quickly change, they are at the mercy of people to tell them how to adapt to the changes so they can survive. Those qualities and abilities are inherently human.

Since the time of Viking 1 and 2 , searching for Martian life (past or present) has been a priority of nearly every mission. This is especially true in light of recent discoveries that water was once abundant on the red planet, because the probability of finding past or present organic life is now greater than ever. That search for life could be performed infinitely better by humans than by robots, as Zubrin explains:

Since it is unlikely that there is life today on the Martian surface, the search for Martian biology will largely be a search for fossils. Small robotic rovers with their limited range and long communication time delay . . . are a very poor tool for conducting such a search. . . . Fossil searches require mobility, agility, and the ability to use intuition to immediately follow up very subtle clues. Human investigators—rock hounds—are required. If Mars is to be made to give up its secrets, "people who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space" will have to go there themselves. 39

Scientists do not necessarily agree on how or when a manned mission to Mars should occur, but most agree that many questions, including the question about Martian life, can be answered only when human beings can explore the red planet. Plus, according to scientist Michael Duke, humans could do the work in a fraction of the time that it takes robots. Even though manned voyages to Mars would take longer to plan and implement than today's robotic missions, Duke says much more scientific work would be accomplished in less time: "Humans could do the same science on Mars in one or two years as robots could do in 100 to 200 years." 40

A Long and Risky Voyage

Human astronauts who take the bold step of traveling on the very first Mars expedition will not be blind to the risks involved. Long before they board the spacecraft, they will know what to expect—and they will also know there is a chance that they might never return to Earth. In a report for NASA, authors Stephen Hoffman and David Kaplan make this uncertainty very clear:

The human exploration of Mars will be a complex undertaking. It is an enterprise that will confirm the potential for humans to leave our home planet and make our way outward into the cosmos. Though just a small step on a cosmic scale, it will be a significant one for humans, because it will require leaving Earth with very limited return capability. The commitment to launch is a commitment to several years away from Earth, and there is a very narrow window within which return is possible. 41

Currently, there is no exact date when a crewed mission will be sent to Mars. However, in a speech given in January 2004, President George W. Bush announced additional financial support for NASA to prepare for future journeys, which would include sending humans back to the moon by 2020 as the first step toward exploring other planets: "The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement. With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond. . . . We do not know where this journey will end. Yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos." 42

Most experts say a manned Mars mission could likely occur by the year 2025, but before that can happen, many hurdles must be overcome. A spacecraft would need to carry people, gear, food, and machinery, which means it would be about thirty times heavier than any spacecraft developed for previous missions. Landing such a craft would be a daunting challenge: Bouncing as high as a five-story building would not work quite as well for humans as for robots. Another consideration is determining a suitable landing site on the Martian surface where people could "set up camp." Because Mars has a total surface area of more than 200 million square miles, astronauts will be able to explore only a fraction of it. If a spaceship should inadvertently land in a bleak, desolate area thousands of miles from regions worth exploring, the entire mission could be wasted.

One of the greatest risks of a human expedition to Mars is the voyage itself, which would be extremely trying for astronauts. The journey would last six months or longer, and for most of that time they would experience microgravity, or the feeling of weightlessness. Though floating on air may look like fun, it can cause serious physical problems. On past space voyages, astronauts have suffered from disorientation, dizziness, congestion, headaches, and nausea. Someone exposed to microgravity over a much longer period of time could develop more severe ailments, including weak and brittle bones from loss of bone mass, atrophied muscles, kidney stones, and other serious physical problems. Scientists are studying ways to counter the effects of weightlessness, such as providing a source of artificial gravity or providing ways for astronauts to exercise during the journey. At this time, however, microgravity still poses one of the greatest risks for long-distance space travel.

Another danger of such a lengthy voyage is the trillions of micrometeorites shooting through the solar system. These fiery fragments of comets and asteroids may be as tiny as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball, and they are constantly flying through space from every direction at speeds of over a hundred thousand miles per hour. A Mars-bound spacecraft would likely be pummeled by micrometeorites throughout much of its journey, which could lead to serious damage. Equally dangerous in deep space are the high levels of radiation caused by solar flares and galactic cosmic rays. Unlike on Earth, where the magnetic field forms a protective bubble against radiation, no such protection exists in space. Just as a spacecraft must be strong enough to stand up against micrometeorites, it must also have some kind of shield that can absorb or block as much radiation as possible. If this radiation penetrates a spacecraft, not only can it damage or destroy the vehicle and its instruments, but it can also be deadly to the astronauts.

Dangers of the Red Planet

Assuming the astronauts aboard a Mars-bound spacecraft can survive the perilous six-month journey, the risks they have endured along the way will drop considerably once they arrive at their destination. They may encounter some micrometeorites on the ground, but they will not be bombarded by the objects flying at them from every which way. Also, even though Martian radiation levels are higher than Earth's, the planet itself serves as a shield against the extreme radiation found in deep space. The astronauts will still feel the effects of Mars's low gravity because it is so much weaker than Earth's, but they will no longer have to endure weightlessness. However, there are still many new risks that await astronauts who step outside their spacecraft for the first time. They will experience hostile conditions that no human has ever faced before—and the proper space suit is the only thing that will save their lives.

One of the biggest risks for humans visiting Mars is the planet's low-pressure atmosphere. Air pressure keeps blood and body fluids liquid and flowing. When it is too low, the fluids in a person's body can boil, lose heat quickly, and then evaporate, which can lead to rapid death. David Akin, a professor at the University of Maryland's Space System Laboratory, describes a simulated experience: "I remember hearing a NASA astronaut talk about an experiment in which he was exposed to a sudden, temporary loss of pressure. He said the first thing he thought was, 'Oh ——!' Then he had this interesting feeling of saliva boiling on his tongue. Then he passed out." 43 In order to protect astronauts from the perilous low-pressure atmosphere, space suits must be pressurized. Specialized breathing apparatuses must also be worn because the Martian atmosphere contains extremely high levels of carbon dioxide and only the slightest traces of oxygen and nitrogen. If astronauts were to breathe the Martian air, they could lose consciousness in as little as fifteen seconds and die shortly thereafter.

Developing space suits for a Mars expedition is a complicated, lengthy process that would take many years. Joe Kosmo, a NASA engineer who designs space suits, says that, unlike astronauts on prior space missions, those who visit Mars will likely spend several years living and working there. That would rule out the bulky attire worn by astronauts on shuttle missions. Even with Mars's low gravity, shuttle space suits would still weigh more than a hundred pounds, and the astronauts wearing them would quickly become exhausted. The ideal space suit will provide the protection astronauts need yet be lightweight enough to be comfortable when worn for long periods of time, as NASA's Phil West explains: "We know how to make a suit you could live in on Mars, but not one that can be effectively manipulated to do jobs there. Such a suit would have to have extremely flexible joints and mix-and-match parts for easy replacement. It would be relatively lightweight, maybe 30 to 40 pounds, but extremely reliable because it would be used for dozens of missions." 44 Even though that suit does not currently exist, Kosmo says the right technologies and materials do exist—now it is just a matter of determining exactly how the suit needs to perform while it is being worn. "The first astronauts on Mars are going to behave like geologists," says Kosmo. "They'll be looking for evidence of life, of water. They'll be poking around, getting down on their hands and knees to look at rocks or drill for samples. They're going to need a really robust suit." 45 NASA is in the process of testing several different models, but until one meets all the necessary criteria, a human expedition to Mars will have to wait.

Mars Direct

Sometime in the distant future, it may be possible for travelers to hop into supersonic spaceships, zoom off to Mars for a week's vacation, and then fly back to Earth, but right now that scenario is found only in science-fiction books. When astronauts finally do make the journey to Mars, they can expect to be away from home for two or three years. With such an extended visit to the red planet, they cannot possibly take enough food, supplies, water, fuel, and equipment with them. Instead, they will have to live off the land, much like the early settlers did during frontier days. Robert Zubrin believes wholeheartedly in that idea:

Living off the land—intelligent use of local resources—is not just the way the West was won; it's the way the Earth was won, and it's also the way Mars can be won. . . . It should come as no surprise that local resources make such a difference in developing a mission to Mars, or anywhere else for that matter. Consider what would have happened if [American explorers] Lewis and Clark had decided to bring all the food, water, and fodder needed for their transcontinental journey. Hundreds of wagons would have been required to carry the supplies. Those supply wagons would need hundreds of horses and drivers. A logistics nightmare would have been created that would have sent the costs of the expedition beyond the resources of the America of [Thomas] Jefferson's time. 46

Zubrin's belief in the importance of human Mars exploration inspired him to create his own mission plan called Mars Direct. Based on his "intelligent use of local resources" philosophy, Zubrin's program features a crewed Mars mission that would be simpler, cheaper, and more successful than traditional mission plans. A crew of astronauts would make the six-month journey to Mars, where they would stay for about a year and a half. Two landers would make the trip: One shaped like a gigantic tuna fish can would transport the astronauts to Mars and serve as their home during the trip, and a second spacecraft would bring them back to Earth. With the help of computerized robots, the astronauts would recycle oxygen and water and make their own fuel by combining ingredients brought from Earth with CO 2 in the Martian atmosphere. Future missions, according to Zubrin's plan, would expand on the first, with more explorers traveling to Mars, living off the land, building greenhouses to grow food, and eventually creating a thriving Martian colony.

First Things First

Some scientists dismiss Zubrin's plan as too simplistic or far-fetched, although most agree that making use of Martian resources is an excellent idea. That is especially true for creating fuel from the Martian atmosphere, which could shave millions of dollars off a mission's cost. But no matter what the details of the first human Mars expedition, there are still too many unknowns and risks to embark on it in the very near future. Until it is deemed safe to send humans traveling through space on their way to the red planet, Mars exploration will have to be performed by robots. And along with making valuable discoveries, the robots can actually pave the way for human exploration.

Ming says that everything scientists learn from current robotic missions can help immensely in planning future Mars travel that involves humans:

Space navigators still incorporate sky charts drawn by Babylonian star gazers to send spacecraft on a perfect trajectory to Mars today. Humans going to Mars—soon or even thousands of years from now—will depend on what we learn from our current robotic missions to create the right spacesuits, habitats, and roving vehicles humans will someday drive on Mars. Robots will probably even deliver our first building materials to Mars, so when humans first land, robots will have paved the way for us in more ways than one. 48

Other space missions in the planning phases will also pave the way toward human Mars exploration. For instance, America's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , scheduled for launch in August 2005, will scour the Martian surface for water and photograph rocks and other objects as small as a beach ball. This close-up view will enable the spacecraft to search for suitable landing sites for future sample-return missions, considered to be the most exciting and scientifically rewarding Mars explorations ever attempted. Both the European Space Agency and NASA are planning sample-return missions around 2011, during which a robotic spacecraft will travel to Mars, collect soil and rock samples, and return the samples to Earth for analysis. This type of mission will provide scientists with their first hands-on opportunity to study Martian surface material, and will allow them to test a spacecraft's ability to leave Mars and make the long journey back to Earth.

The Future Beckons

No one knows for sure when humans will make the first voyage to Mars, but the time will definitely come when they do. And when that happens, it will be the magical realization of a dream that has survived for centuries, as Paul Raeburn writes:

Thousands of years after the ancients gazed at Mars with fear and fascination, it remains among the most mysterious and intriguing bodies in the heavens. The exploration of the Earth's surface is nearly complete, and Mars represents a new frontier, a dazzling new destination to fire the imaginations of today's explorers. The technology to send a human mission to Mars is now within reach. And it is conceivable that, some time in the twenty-first century, scientists may join science fiction writers in the exploration of Mars, as human beings, for the first time, step onto the cold red dust of the Martian surface. 49

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How long will it take for humans to colonize another planet?

There's a huge difference between sending humans to Mars and colonizing worlds outside our solar system.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to have a city of a million people on Mars by 2050. That may sound astronomically ambitious considering humans have never set foot on the Martian surface. But is it feasible? How long would it take for humans to colonize another planet? And could it ever be possible for people to colonize worlds outside the solar system?

The answers to these questions depend heavily on which planet you're talking about. For Mars, decades isn't necessarily an unrealistic time frame. Serkan Saydam , deputy director of the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research and a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said human colonization of Mars is possible within decades.  

"I believe by 2050 we will have a human colony on Mars," Saydam told Live Science.  

Saydam is a mining engineer who specializes in researching future mining. The first major step in establishing a successful Mars colony will be water, and that can be extracted from ice and/or hydrated minerals, according to Saydam. He thinks water will then facilitate agriculture and the ability to grow food on Mars , like in the 2015 movie "The Martian," while hydrogen from the ice and minerals could also be used as an energy source for rocket propellant. 

But there isn't a scientific consensus on Mars colonization by 2050, and other scientists have offered less optimistic opinions. Louis Friedman , an astronautics engineer and co-founder of the nonprofit The Planetary Society, suggested to Gizmodo in 2019 that Mars colonization was unlikely for the foreseeable future, while Rachael Seidler , a neuroscientist at the University of Florida who has worked with NASA astronauts, told Gizmodo that people like to be optimistic about colonizing Mars, but it sounded "a bit pie-in-the-sky."

Humanity will, however, likely reach Mars within decades. China plans to start sending human crews to Mars in 2033 , while NASA aims to send astronauts there by the late 2030s or early 2040s. Once humans get there, the next step could be to build a colony. 

Related: How many humans could the moon support?

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Colonization implies some degree of self-sufficiency but not necessarily complete independence from Earth. Saydam compares Mars with a remote island where you'd still need to import things occasionally. "Most of the equipment and tools will be sent from Earth," Saydam said. "I don't think you can manufacture a truck on the Mars surface."

Mars would need to produce something for a long-term colony to be financially viable. Space tourism is one option, but Saydam pointed to mineral extraction as key to colonization success. For example, space mining on nearby asteroids for valuable materials such as platinum could create new space economies, thereby driving further investment and exploration.

Though Mars is our most realistic option for extraterrestrial colonization, our red neighbor isn't exactly the most accommodating planet for humans. Mars' atmosphere is more than 95% carbon dioxide; it's really cold, with an average temperature of around minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius); it takes spacecraft from Earth about 8.5 months to reach; and it's bombarded with harmful radiation.

— Could Earth ever leave our solar system?

— Could climate change make humans go extinct?

— What's the minimum number of people needed to survive an apocalypse?

There's almost certainly more hospitable new homes to be found on planets beyond our solar system , called exoplanets. The problem with exoplanets is that they're very, very far away. We haven't even sent a spacecraft to an exoplanet, and the only probes to leave our solar system were Voyager 1 and 2, which took 35 years and 41 years , respectively, to go interstellar. Exoplanets are much farther away. 

"The closest exoplanet would take several tens of thousands of years to reach with our current technology," Frédéric Marin , a black hole astrophysicist at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg at the University of Strasbourg in France, told Live Science. 

Those travel times may make exoplanet colonization sound impossible. But Marin, who runs computer simulations for interstellar travel as a scientific curiosity, expects them to plummet in the near future, thanks to faster spacecraft.

"We know in science that every hundred years, every century, the velocity of your means of propulsion increases by a factor of 10," Marin said. In other words, as humans learn how to travel faster and faster in space with each passing century, the potential travel time to exoplanets could drop from tens of thousands of years to thousands of years, and then to hundreds of years. 

Marin laid out a hypothetical scenario of reaching an exoplanet that's at least hospitable to humans within 500 years. A journey lasting centuries would still require a spaceship piloted by multiple generations of humans, most of whom would never see the exoplanet that's eventually colonized. 

Marin's simulations suggest that around 500 people is a suitable starting population for a multigenerational colony ship. But how humans would cope with spending the rest of their lives on a spaceship and how their offspring would handle being born into interstellar travel life raise ethical questions and uncertainties. And with climate change and other Earth-based challenges threatening to drive humans to extinction before we crack interstellar travel, there's no guarantee we'll ever colonize exoplanets.

Patrick Pester is a freelance writer and previously a staff writer at Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K.

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NASA crew emerges from simulated Mars mission after more than a year in isolation

A crew of NASA scientists emerged from a simulation of Mars after over a year in the faux-red-planet Saturday.

The four crew members exited the 17,000 square foot, 3D-printed habitat and walked into a news conference. "It's actually just so wonderful to be able to say 'hello' to you all," Kelly Haston, mission commander said.

The mission was the first of NASA's  Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog program that aims collect data on human health and performance within the parameters of Mars' resource limits.

The four volunteers entered the17,000 square foot, 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023. Nathan Jones, the mission's medical officer, said the 378 days in the habitat, "went by quickly."

The crew worked through challenges future astronauts could face on a manned mission, including "Marswalks," communication delays and growing and harvesting vegetables.

"Why go to Mars? Because it's possible,"  Anca Selariu, the mission's science officer said. "Because space can unite and bring out the best in us. Because it's one defining step that 'Earthlings' will take to light the way into the next centuries."

Missions a test run for Mars

The goal of the CHAPEA missions is to collect data on human health and performance ahead of any attempts to put people on the red planet. The first mission focused on nutrition, according to Steve Koerner, deputy director of Johnson Space Center.

"They've been separated from their families, placed on a carefully prescribed meal plan and undergone a lot of observation," Koerner said, calling the work, "crucial science as we prepare to send people on to the red planet."

Brockwell, noted that the mission was an exercise in resource management.

"I'm grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilize resources no faster than they can be replenished and produce waste no faster than they can be processed back into resources," Brockwell said. "We cannot live, dream, create or explore on any significant timeframe if we don't live these principles, but if we do, we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds."

There are two more CHAEPA missions scheduled, according to NASA.

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Crew of NASA's earthbound simulated Mars habitat emerge after a year

by Brian P. D. Hannon

The crew of a NASA mission to Mars emerged from their craft after a yearlong voyage that never left Earth.

The four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months inside NASA's first simulated Mars environment at Johnson Space Center in Houston, coming out of the artificial alien environment Saturday around 5 p.m.

Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones entered the 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023, as the maiden crew of the space agency's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog project.

Haston, the mission commander, began with a simple, "Hello."

"It's actually just so wonderful to be able to say 'hello' to you all," she said.

Jones, a physician and the mission medical officer, said their 378 days in confinement "went by quickly."

The quartet lived and worked inside the space of 17,000 square feet (1,579 square meters) to simulate a mission to the red planet, the fourth from the sun and a frequent focus of discussion among scientists and sci-fi fans alike concerning a possible voyage taking humans beyond our moon.

The first CHAPEA crew focused on establishing possible conditions for future Mars operations through simulated spacewalks, dubbed "Marswalks," as well as growing and harvesting vegetables to supplement their provisions and maintaining the habitat and their equipment.

They also worked through challenges a real Mars crew would be expected to experience including limited resources , isolation and delays in communication of up to 22 minutes with their home planet on the other side of the habitat's walls, NASA said.

Two additional CHAPEA missions are planned and crews will continue conducting simulated spacewalks and gathering data on factors related to physical and behavioral health and performance, NASA said.

Steve Koerner, deputy director of Johnson Space Center, said most of the first crew's experimentation focused on nutrition and how that affected their performance. The work was "crucial science as we prepare to send people on to the red planet," he said.

"They've been separated from their families, placed on a carefully prescribed meal plan and undergone a lot of observation," Koerner said.

"Mars is our goal," he said, calling the project an important step in America's intent to be a leader in the global space exploration effort.

Emerging after a knock on the habitat's door by Kjell Lindgren, an astronaut and the deputy director of flight operations, the four volunteers spoke of the gratitude they had for each other and those who waited patiently outside, as well as lessons learned about a prospective manned mission to Mars and life on Earth.

Brockwell, the crew 's flight engineer, said the mission showed him the importance of living sustainably for the benefit of everyone on Earth.

"I'm very grateful to have had this incredible opportunity to live for a year within the spirit of planetary adventure towards an exciting future, and I'm grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilize resources no faster than they can be replenished and produce waste no faster than they can be processed back into resources," Brockwell said.

"We cannot live, dream, create or explore on any significant timeframe if we don't live these principles, but if we do, we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds," he said.

Science officer Anca Selariu said she had been asked many times why there is a fixation on Mars.

"Why go to Mars? Because it's possible," she said. "Because space can unite and bring out the best in us. Because it's one defining step that 'Earthlings' will take to light the way into the next centuries."

© 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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November 13, 2015

Oh the Places We Won't Go: Humans Will Settle Mars, and Nowhere Else [Excerpt]

Planetary Society co-founder Louis Friedman argues the Red Planet will be humanity’s final destination, but our robots could reach the stars

By Louis Friedman

Adapted from Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars , by Louis Friedman. Copyright © 2015 Louis Friedman with permission of the publisher. The University of Arizona Press. All rights reserved.

Humans will become a multi-planet species by making it to Mars, but no farther. That is, they will never travel beyond Mars. Some find this to be negative—an absolute statement of limits and thus of giving up. My job here is to prove the opposite: humans exploring the universe with nanotechnology robotics, bio-molecular engineering, and artificial intelligence is something that is exciting and positive, and is based on an optimistic view of the future.

Tom Paine, NASA’s administrator at the height of the Apollo program, had a clear idea about the goal of human space exploration. It was the settlement of Mars. In fact, he hoped we would not find life on Mars so that we could more rapidly devote ourselves to bringing humans there. He wanted The Planetary Society, which I co-founded with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, to make Martian settlement our vision and mission. While very supportive of human Mars exploration, we at the Society were skeptical about the question of settlement. We would argue that we don’t know if settlement is possible or sensible; we might “only” explore with outposts and never really settle there (as in Antarctica or in the oceans of Earth). We maintained our scientific skepticism across decades even as NASA periodically considered ambitious plans for human missions to Mars.

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But now I have come to realize that Tom Paine was right—settlement of Mars is the rationale for human spaceflight. I further have come to realize that Mars not only should be the next goal for humans in space but also is the ultimate and hence only goal, at least physically. Exploring beyond Mars will be done virtually, by processing information from other worlds while our bodies stay at home (albeit, I hope, on a multi-planet home of Earth and Mars).

To be clear: I believe that human space exploration will continue forever , but that human spaceflight will stop at Mars. This is not a contradiction—it is just a new way of thinking, a problem perhaps for an older generation but not for future ones where already ideas about connectivity, networking, exploration, and virtual reality influence the perception of “being there.” Once we understand that human space travel beyond Mars will be technologically, psychologically, and culturally very different from how it is carried out today and in the near future, then our construction and development of space programs should be different. We can solve the conundrums imposed by the merging of grand visions and political constraints—the biggest stumbling block of space policy.

You might now wonder, what’s so special about Mars? Why do I say human space travel will change only beyond Mars, and why do I insist that humans still must and will travel themselves to Mars and perhaps even settle there? The answer is found in the survival imperative of becoming a multi-planet species, and in Mars as the only plausible destination for that multi-planet future.

“Space is big, really big,” wrote Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . Before ever reading Adams’s novel I wrote those same words in my 1988 book Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel , because I was struck by the same thing that Adams was—the distances between stars are unimaginably enormous. “How big is space?” you might ask. Well, it might be infinite (we only know what we can see so far), but the observable universe has a diameter of about 90 billion light-years. That equals 850 billion trillion kilometers. That number, incidentally, is more than the number of grains of sand on Earth. In that observable universe there are about 100 billion galaxies, and in our galaxy, there are about 100 billion stars. One of those stars is our Sun, and its solar system has yet to be completely explored. If we divide the number of stars (100 billion ×100 billion = 10 22 ) into the volume of the observable universe (assuming it is a sphere since it has no preferred direction), we find about 25 stars per trillion cubic light-years. If that sounds pretty empty to you, then you have it right: space is mostly empty!

The point of playing with these unimaginable numbers is to illustrate that interstellar travel is a subject of science fiction, not ready for prime time—at least not for humans. Most of the serious technical work for traveling between the stars, some with brilliant engineering and sophisticated applications of physics, relies on schemes that are entirely fictitious—or at least not real in any practical sense.

The barrier of bigness preventing human interstellar travel will be overcome by the enablement of smallness—the evolution of information processing and nanotechnology that will permit virtual exploration of other worlds. The pathway that takes us there is solar sailing, an elegant method that uses beams of light to accelerate spacecraft to very high speeds. Someday, this is how we—or at least our robotic emissaries—may visit other star systems.

I am convinced that the long-range future of humankind is to extend its presence in the universe virtually—with robotic emissaries, bio-engineered payloads, and artificial intelligence. Payloads will be designed for information processing, not life support. But does that conclusion doom us to be couch potatoes—staying at home forever, confined by the limits of our planet? This is neither culturally nor physically acceptable. Culturally, we remain wanderers and explorers. Physically, the survival of our species requires humankind to become a multi-planet species. We cannot put all our eggs in our Earthly basket. It has too many forces that might cause it to fray—forces such as asteroid impact, large-scale conflict and war, pandemics, global climate change, and other types of environmental destruction, such as resource depletion and scarcity.

To become a multi-planet species, we humans must reach Mars, because it is the only place we can reach. As arid, frozen, and desolate as it may be, Mars is the only known world besides our own that could be considered remotely habitable for humans. Indeed, it may have been much more habitable in the past, and life may have originated there as fast as it did on Earth and even have spread here from there, or there from here. Therefore Mars remains a human destination. It is the laboratory in which the evolution of the human species will be tested and, ultimately, determined.

Getting beyond Mars (with humans) is impossible—not just physically for the foreseeable future but also culturally forever . By the time we set foot on Mars, our technologies will have evolved so that the human presence in space is being extended robotically and virtually, rather than corporally—that is, by leaving the human at home. Human presence on Mars simply extends the definition of “home” to include the most sustainable place within the inner solar system where humans can build a resilient, enduring multi-planet existence. Only by realizing our technological limits can we hope to realize a greater, more daring vision, of spreading our exploration and influence outward into the universe and onward into an unlimited future.

Louis Friedman holds a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked on deep-space missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and he co-founded The Planetary Society with Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray, serving as the organization’s executive director for 30 years. He was co-leader of the Keck Institute for Space Studies Asteroid Retrieval Mission and Interstellar Medium Exploration Studies at Caltech.

Watch CBS News

NASA's simulated Mars voyage ends after more than a year

July 7, 2024 / 11:50 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Four volunteers have emerged from NASA's simulated Mars environment after more than a year spent on a mission that never actually departed Earth.

The volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months inside NASA's first simulated Mars habitat at Johnson Space Center in Houston, which was designed to help scientists and researchers anticipate what a real mission to the planet might be like, along with all of its expected challenges. The crew exited the artificial alien environment on Saturday around 5 p.m., after 378 days.

Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones entered the 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023, as the maiden crew of the space agency's Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog , or CHAPEA, project. The group consisted of a research scientist, a structural engineer, an emergency medicine physician, and a U.S. Navy microbiologist, respectively, who were selected from an applicant pool to head up the project's first yearlong mission. None of them are trained as astronauts.

Once they emerged, Haston, the mission commander, began with a simple, "Hello."

"It's actually just so wonderful to be able to say 'hello' to you all," she said.

Jones, a physician and the mission medical officer, said their 378 days in confinement "went by quickly."

The quartet lived and worked inside the space of 17,000 square feet to simulate a mission to the red planet, the fourth from the sun and a frequent focus of discussion among scientists and sci-fi fans alike concerning a possible voyage taking humans beyond our moon.

The first CHAPEA crew focused on establishing possible conditions for future Mars operations through simulated spacewalks, dubbed "Marswalks," as well as growing and harvesting vegetables to supplement their provisions and maintaining the habitat and their equipment.

They also worked through challenges a real Mars crew would be expected to experience including limited resources, isolation and delays in communication of up to 22 minutes with their home planet on the other side of the habitat's walls, NASA said.

Two additional CHAPEA missions are planned and crews will continue conducting simulated spacewalks and gathering data on factors related to physical and behavioral health and performance, NASA said.

Steve Koerner, deputy director of Johnson Space Center, said most of the first crew's experimentation focused on nutrition and how that affected their performance. The work was "crucial science as we prepare to send people on to the red planet," he said.

"They've been separated from their families, placed on a carefully prescribed meal plan and undergone a lot of observation," Koerner said.

"Mars is our goal," he said, calling the project an important step in America's intent to be a leader in the global space exploration effort.

Emerging after a knock on the habitat's door by Kjell Lindgren, an astronaut and the deputy director of flight operations, the four volunteers spoke of the gratitude they had for each other and those who waited patiently outside, as well as lessons learned about a prospective manned mission to Mars and life on Earth.

Brockwell, the crew's flight engineer, said the mission showed him the importance of living sustainably for the benefit of everyone on Earth.

"I'm very grateful to have had this incredible opportunity to live for a year within the spirit of planetary adventure towards an exciting future, and I'm grateful for the chance to live the idea that we must utilise resources no faster than they can be replenished and produce waste no faster than they can be processed back into resources," Brockwell said.

"We cannot live, dream, create or explore on any significant timeframe if we don't live these principles, but if we do, we can achieve and sustain amazing and inspiring things like exploring other worlds," he said.

Science officer Anca Selariu said she had been asked many times why there is a fixation on Mars.

"Why go to Mars? Because it's possible," she said. "Because space can unite and bring out the best in us. Because it's one defining step that 'Earthlings' will take to light the way into the next centuries."

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This new study could kill manned missions to Mars before they even happen

B oth NASA and SpaceX are hoping to one day send humans to Mars. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has openly shared plans to colonize the Red Planet over the years, and NASA has even set a possible manned mission to Mars in the 2030s. Of course, there are a lot of obstacles to overcome before we can hope to accomplish those goals, but now, new concerns over astronaut kidney damage may kill those hopes before they even have a chance to come to fruition.

We already know that sending humans to Mars would take months-likely years in total. That's because our neighboring planet is roughly 225 million kilometers away, and scientists estimate it may take up to six months to travel there with current space technology. Sure, nuclear-powered rockets could change that, but that's a gamble we haven't quite worked out yet.

Before we can worry about all that, though, we need to address a new worry. According to a newly published study, the harsh conditions of space travel may actually cause astronauts kidney damage. The study used samples from more than 40 space missions involving humans and mice. The data revealed that the conditions in space cause certain parts of the kidney to shrink after less than a month in space.

This is extremely troubling news, especially after recent research has shown that just three days in space is long enough to cause cognitive decline in astronauts, too. If we truly want to be able to send humans to Mars and beyond, we're going to have to figure out ways to protect their kidneys along the way. Otherwise, they may suffer from severe radiation damage, which could cause kidney failure.

One big reason that this news is especially concerning is because the kidneys are very slow to show radiation damage. That means that even with routine check-ups, astronauts may not always catch kidney damage in time, forcing them to have to undergo other treatments to keep their body working as it needs to.

The researchers detailed their findings in Nature Communications . While they say that there isn't any way to protect the kidneys from cosmic radiation using shielding, they hope that we can somehow develop technological or pharmaceutical measures that can help make deep space travel like manned missions to Mars possible.

The post This new study could kill manned missions to Mars before they even happen appeared first on BGR .

How long does it take to get to Mars?

We explore how long it takes to get to Mars and the factors that affect a journey to the Red Planet.

• Distance to Mars
• Traveling at the speed of light

Fastest spacecraft so far

Mars travel time q&a with an expert.

• Travel time calculation problems
• Past mission's travel times

Additional resources

Ever wondered how long does it take to get to Mars? 

The answer depends on several factors, ranging from the position of Earth and Mars to the technology that would propel you there. According to NASA , a one-way trip to the Red Planet would take about nine months . If you wanted to make it a round-trip , all in all, it would take about 21 months as you will need to wait about three months on Mars to make sure Earth and Mars are in a suitable location to make the trip back home. 

We take a look at how long a trip to the Red Planet would take using available technology and explore some of the factors that would affect your travel time.

Related: Curiosity rover: 15 awe-inspiring photos of Mars (gallery) 

How far away is Mars?

To determine how long it will take to reach Mars, we must first know the distance between the two planets.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, and the second closest to Earth (Venus is the closest). But the distance between Earth and Mars is constantly changing as they travel around the sun .

In theory, the closest that Earth and Mars would approach each other would be when Mars is at its closest point to the sun (perihelion) and Earth is at its farthest (aphelion). This would put the planets only 33.9 million miles (54.6 million kilometers) apart. However, this has never happened in recorded history. The closest recorded approach of the two planets occurred in 2003 when they were only 34.8 million miles (56 million km) apart.

The two planets are farthest apart when they are both at their farthest from the sun, on opposite sides of the star. At this point, they can be 250 million miles (401 million km) apart.

The average distance between Earth and Mars is 140 million miles (225 million km).

Related: What is the temperature on Mars?

How long would it take to travel to Mars at the speed of light?

Light travels at approximately 186,282 miles per second (299,792 km per second). Therefore, a light shining from the surface of Mars would take the following amount of time to reach Earth (or vice versa):

• Closest possible approach: 182 seconds, or 3.03 minutes
• Closest recorded approach: 187 seconds, or 3.11 minutes
• Farthest approach: 1,342 seconds, or 22.4 minutes
• On average: 751 seconds, or just over 12.5 minutes

The fastest spacecraft is NASA's Parker Solar Probe , as it keeps breaking its own speed records as it moves closer to the sun. On Nov 21, 2021, the Parker Solar Probe reached a top speed of 101 miles (163 kilometers) per second during its 10th close flyby of our star, which translates to a phenomenal 364,621 mph (586,000 kph). According to a NASA statement , when the Parker Solar Probe comes within 4 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface in December 2024, the spacecraft's speed will top 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kph)!

So if you were theoretically able to hitch a ride on the Parker Solar Probe and take it on a detour from its sun-focused mission to travel in a straight line from Earth to Mars, traveling at the speeds the probe reaches during its 10th flyby (101 miles per second), the time it would take you to get to Mars would be:

• Closest possible approach: 93 hours 
• Closest recorded approach: 95 hours  
• Farthest approach: 686 hours (28.5 days)  
• On average: 384 hours (16 days)  

We asked Michael Khan, ESA Senior Mission Analyst some frequently asked questions about travel times to Mars. 

Michael Khan is a Senior Mission Analyst for the European Space Agency (ESA). His work involves studying the orbital mechanics for journeys to planetary bodies including Mars.

How long does it take to get to Mars & what affects the travel time?

The time it takes to get from one celestial body to another depends largely on the energy that one is willing to expend. Here  "energy" refers to the effort put in by the launch vehicle and the sum of the maneuvers of the rocket motors aboard the spacecraft, and the amount of propellant that is used. In space travel, everything boils down to energy. Spaceflight is the clever management of energy.

Some common solutions for transfers to the moon are 1) the Hohmann-like transfer and 2) the Free Return Transfer. The Hohmann Transfer is often referred to as the one that requires the lowest energy, but that is true only if you want the transfer to last only a few days and, in addition, if some constraints on the launch apply. Things get very complicated from there on, so I won't go into details.

Concerning transfers to Mars, these are by necessity interplanetary transfers, i.e., orbits that have the sun as central body. Otherwise, much of what was said above applies: the issue remains the expense of energy. An additional complication lies in the fact that the Mars orbit is quite eccentric and also its orbit plane is inclined with respect to that of the Earth. And of course, Mars requires longer to orbit the sun than the Earth does. All of this is taken into account in a common type of diagram called the "pork chop plot", which essentially tells you the required dates of departure and arrival and the amount of energy required.

The "pork chop plot" shows the trajectory expert that opportunities for Mars transfers arise around every 25-26 months, and that these transfers are subdivided into different classes, one that is a bit faster, with typically around 5-8 months and the other that takes about 7-11 months. There are also transfers that take a lot longer, but I’m not talking about those here. Mostly, but not always, the second, slower one turns out to be more efficient energy-wise. A rule of thumb is that the transfer to Mars takes around as long as the human period of gestation, approximately 9 months. But that really is no more than an approximate value; you still have to do all the math to find out what applies to a specific date.

Why are journey times a lot slower for spacecraft intending to orbit or land on the target body e.g. Mars compared to those that are just going to fly by?

If you want your spacecraft to enter Mars orbit or to land on the surface, you add a lot of constraints to the design problem. For an orbiter, you have to consider the significant amount of propellant required for orbit insertion, while for a lander, you have to design and build a heat shield that can withstand the loads of atmospheric entry. Usually, this will mean that the arrival velocity of Mars cannot exceed a certain boundary. Adding this constraint to the trajectory optimisation problem will limit the range of solutions you obtain to transfers that are Hohmann-like. This usually leads to an increase in transfer duration.

The problems with calculating travel times to Mars

The problem with the previous calculations is that they measure the distance between the two planets as a straight line. Traveling through the farthest passing of Earth and Mars would involve a trip directly through the sun, while spacecraft must of necessity move in orbit around the solar system's star.

Although this isn't a problem for the closest approach, when the planets are on the same side of the sun, another problem exists. The numbers also assume that the two planets remain at a constant distance; that is, when a probe is launched from Earth while the two planets are at the closest approach, Mars would remain the same distance away over the length of time it took the probe to travel. 

Related: A brief history of Mars missions

In reality, however, the planets are moving at different rates during their orbits around the sun. Engineers must calculate the ideal orbits for sending a spacecraft from Earth to Mars. Like throwing a dart at a moving target from a moving vehicle, they must calculate where the planet will be when the spacecraft arrives, not where it is when it leaves Earth. 

It's also not possible to travel as fast as you can possibly go if your aim is to eventually orbit your target planet. Spacecraft need to arrive slow enough to be able to perform orbit insertion maneuvers and not just zip straight past their intended destination. 

The travel time to Mars also depends on the technological developments of propulsion systems.

According to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's website, the ideal lineup for a launch to Mars would get you to the planet in roughly nine months. The website quotes physics professor Craig C. Patten , of the University of California, San Diego:

"It takes the Earth one year to orbit the sun and it takes Mars about 1.9 years (say 2 years for easy calculation) to orbit the sun. The elliptical orbit which carries you from Earth to Mars is longer than Earth's orbit but shorter than Mars' orbit. Accordingly, we can estimate the time it would take to complete this orbit by averaging the lengths of Earth's orbit and Mars' orbit. Therefore, it would take about one and a half years to complete the elliptical orbit.

"In the nine months it takes to get to Mars, Mars moves a considerable distance around in its orbit, about three-eighths of the way around the sun. You have to plan to make sure that by the time you reach the distance of Mar's orbit, Mars is where you need it to be! Practically, this means that you can only begin your trip when Earth and Mars are properly lined up. This only happens every 26 months. That is, there is only one launch window every 26 months."

The trip could be shortened by burning more fuel — a process not ideal with today's technology, Patten said.

Evolving technology can help to shorten the flight. NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) will be the new workhorse for carrying upcoming missions, and potentially humans, to the red planet. SLS is currently being constructed and tested, with NASA now targeting a launch in March or April 2022 for its Artemis 1 flight, the first flight of its SLS rocket.

Robotic spacecraft could one day make the trip in only three days. Photon propulsion would rely on a powerful laser to accelerate spacecraft to velocities approaching the speed of light. Philip Lubin, a physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team are working on Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration (DEEP-IN). The method could propel a 220-lb. (100 kilograms) robotic spacecraft to Mars in only three days, he said.

"There are recent advances which take this from science fiction to science reality," Lubin said at the 2015 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fall symposium . "There's no known reason why we cannot do this." 

How long did past missions take to reach Mars?

Here is an infographic detailing how long it took several historical missions to reach the Red Planet (either orbiting or landing on the surface). Their launch dates are included for perspective. 

Explore NASA's lunar exploration plans with their Moon to Mars overview . You can read about how to get people from Earth to Mars and safely back again with this informative article on The Conversation . Curious about the human health risks of a mission to the Red Planet? You may find this research paper of particular interest.  

Bibliography

• Lubin, Philip. " A roadmap to interstellar flight. " arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.01356 (2016). 
• Donahue, Ben B. " Future Missions for the NASA Space Launch System. " AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2021 Forum . 2021. 
• Srinivas, Susheela. " Hop, Skip and Jump—The Moon to Mars Mission. " (2019). 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

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Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.com. She loves all things space and astronomy-related, and enjoys the opportunity to learn more. She has a Bachelor’s degree in English and Astrophysics from Agnes Scott college and served as an intern at Sky & Telescope magazine. In her free time, she homeschools her four children. Follow her on Twitter at @NolaTRedd

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You can find all of NASA’s Moon to Mars architecture documents at:

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