why should humans travel to mars

10 Reasons Why Humanity May Want To Colonize And Live On Mars

Last Updated: March 25, 2024

While Earth is honestly the best place for us to live in the solar system, what about other options? While human space exploration has expanded for decades, we have still been limited to this planet, its orbit (the ISS and other space stations), and past missions to the Moon as of June 2023 (crewed missions to the Moon are scheduled to begin next year). But Mars has been on the horizon for decades as the closest planet to our own. While it’s not identical to Earth, human habitation is possible. So, let’s dive into 10 reasons to colonize and live on Mars!

As the closest planet to home, Mars sits at an average of about 140 million miles (225 million km) but varies widely with the closest approaches at about 39-63 million miles (62-101 million km) apart and the opposition when both are at aphelion can be 249 million miles (401 million km) apart.

To make the fastest and most efficient trip, space agencies plan for a launch window around the closest approaches, but they also have to consider options like fuel efficiency and so they might choose to use gravity assists around other astronomical objects like Venus , Earth, or the Moon to speed up the spacecraft which makes the exact travel time a little more complicated. In general, a crewed mission to Mars would likely take about 6.5-8 months (one-way) .

While that’s a long time to be in space, it’s short compared to any other destination. (Check out our pieces on how long it would take to get to Jupiter , Saturn , or Uranus ). This makes Mars the most reasonable next destination in space after the Moon for human space exploration (while Venus is closer, extreme temperatures, atmospheric pressure, and toxic atmosphere make it uninhabitable for humans even though recent research suggests conditions may be favorable for bacteria in certain altitudes of its atmosphere).

In fact, NASA’s upcoming crewed missions to the Moon are actually much bigger than simply lunar colonization. They are the stepping stones for sending humans to Mars by the 2040s. In addition, many private space exploration companies, like SpaceX have expressed interest in or even goals to send humans to Mars in the near future as well.

So, let’s dive in! What are 10 reasons to colonize and live on Mars?

#1 - The Search for Life off Earth

Knowing whether or not life existed or exists beyond Earth is a fundamental question in our understanding of our planet, our solar system, our universe, and even ourselves. As the closest planet to us, Mars is a prime destination to explore this question.

In addition, it is the most similar planet to us in the solar system. In fact, evidence suggests Mars used to be covered in water, warmer, and hosted a thicker atmosphere which would make it a much more potentially habitable environment in its past. There is even a theory that life on Earth could have come from rocks rich with microorganisms ejected from Mars and landed on Earth (the Mars Life Theory).

Martian rocks have been found on Earth as meteors from asteroids and the moon have, though none of these contain signs of life. Human colonization of Mars would increase the chance of finding evidence of past or even current life on another planet.

#2 - Understanding the Surface of Mars and Its Evolution

Studying the surface of Mars will help us uncover clues about this past, its evolution to its present-day state, and possibly even our own future. If Mars used to be like Earth, then Earth’s future may look like Mars. Studying the evolution of its surface can help us understand if it is a potential future for Earth, which provides vital information in our stewardship of the planet for the next several decades and even centuries.

#3 - Testing Ground and Launch Pad for Future Human Space Exploration

If we can colonize and live on Mars, it will allow us to test further human space exploration, helping us to develop better and safer technology that could be used in more hostile environments like those further out in the solar system or asteroids.

In addition, Mars has about 38% the gravity of Earth (requiring space suits to weigh us down and move effectively on the surface), which means that it would be easier to launch a spacecraft from Mars than it would be from Earth in terms of escaping the planet’s gravity.

It could prove to be an efficient spaceport for missions to the outer solar system due to this and the fact that it is slightly closer to those targets than we are.

#4 - Develop New Technologies

Exploration has always fueled innovation, especially with technology. Many common objects in daily life today like GPS, medical diagnostic tools, wireless technology, cordless power tools, sports bras, diapers, solar panels, camera phones, and the rumble strips on the highway are because of space exploration. Many medical innovations have come from NASA’s research such as implantable heart monitors, invisible braces, computerized insulin pumps, and artificial limbs.

The continual robotic exploration of Mars has fueled innovation in robotics, geology, coding, communications, and more. In the words of Mary Roach in Packing for Mars , “If it’s cordless, fireproof, lightweight and strong, miniaturized, or automate, chances are good NASA has had a hand in the technology.” The challenge of sending humans to live on Mars will push us to create new innovations that will not only help the Mars dwellers, but us here at home.

When the Space Race started, most people wouldn’t have even dreamed of some of the technology we have today because of human space exploration. Who knows what we will create in the service of living on Mars that will have a daily impact on future generations both there and here?

#5 - Encourage Space Tourism

We’ve talked about the current feasibility and cost of going to space today (including after you’ve died ) along with the pros and cons of space tourism in general. We are already sending humans into space at an increasing rate and lower costs (though it’s often still out of reach for the average person as of 2023).

The goal of colonizing Mars fuels innovations in space tourism and vice versa. As we plan for and eventually send the first humans to Mars, their innovations and tests of these technologies will help us improve space tourism closer to home, making it more accessible and safer for everyone.

Just as the airplane used to be an extravagance only for the wealthy, space tourism will become more and more available to the average person as human space exploration continues.

#6 - Offer Space Mining Opportunities

The idea of mining minerals and chemical compounds from astronomical objects like the moon, asteroids, and planets has been suggested and studied time and time again especially to fill the growing needs of the technology sector.

Whether this truly solves our issue of nonrenewable resources or simply elongates our timeline is another matter. However, colonizing Mars could help us better understand how to safely and efficiently harvest valuable materials on the Martian surface and beyond.

One of the pieces of equipment on the Perseverance Rover (the Mars Oxygen Experiment or MOXIE) is working on converting Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen and is paving the way to help humans live and work on Mars.

#7 - Advancing Science in General

There are the obvious areas of scientific advancement from human space exploration that have already been discussed (search for life, planetary evolution, technology, etc.) but the beauty about science is that it’s all interconnected.

When we push the boundaries of one area of science, we often make discoveries that impact other areas of science. Exploring and living on a planet other than our own will help us better understand astronomy, physics, and geology as well as less expected areas such as biology, neurology, and psychology as humans have to deal with living in isolation not just from people but from many of the comforts of life we have become accustomed to.

Another point to note is that many advocate that scientific discovery would happen much faster if humans were on Mars as opposed to just robots. While robots can do an immense amount of research, there is something special about the human brain and its ability to make connections and be creative.

#8 - Ensuring our survival

An obvious reason that is often brought up when discussing sending humans to and colonizing Mars is using it as a second home. If we have humans on planets other than Earth, it provides us with a backup home so to speak if something were to happen to Earth.

If a meteor like the one that took out the dinosaurs collided with Earth, having humans on Mars would preserve our species (as we discussed in our Near Earth Asteroids article, the odds that this will happen in the next 100 years is essentially zero and even in the next 1,000 years, the chance is negligible).

We also know that side effects of human advancement have negatively impacted the environment which could make human life more difficult or even impossible in the future. Having Mars as a second option to slowly move people to could help preserve our species (though, many advocate we shouldn’t doom Mars to the same fate by colonizing it before we understand how to care for our own planet sustainably).

While Mars has many differences that would make life difficult for humans (i.e. the atmosphere, lower gravity, lack of easy reliable access to water, etc.) it is the best option in the solar system currently.

#9 - Advancing as a species

Just as exploration fuels all kinds of scientific discovery, it can help us as a species to advance and become better in a variety of ways. It inspires generations young and old to pursue new career paths. It forces us to consider our humanity and our home.

It forces us to reconsider philosophy. When we better understand the solar system and the universe, it helps us better see just how special our corner of space is and helps us see our similarities instead of our differences in terms of other humans.

#10 - Political and economic leadership and change

space exploration is fueled by policy and in turn, a country can be fueled by space exploration. The space race is proof that space exploration impacts the politics and economy of a nation and its relationships with other nations.

Since space exploration fuels innovation, the country that makes it to Mars will also see political and economic benefits that the other countries may not, or at least not for some time. When we invest in exploration, we invest in our future, which creates economic and political opportunities.

Especially in recent years, the prospect of going to Mars has become more tangible and exciting. Both space agencies and private space companies currently have plans to send humans to Mars in the coming decades.

While many may offer the counterargument that we have enough problems here on Earth to focus on before simply moving those problems to another planet, colonizing Mars would provide a number of beneficial impacts for science, innovation, and society.

We, as a species, and as individual nations will have to make the decision concerning its importance in the coming decades, but as of now, there is interest in at least sending people to the Red Planet.

Time will only tell how those decisions pan out, but for now, it’s exciting to consider the possibilities and benefits of human colonization of another planet.

Written by Sarah Hoffschwelle

Sarah Hoffschwelle is a freelance writer who covers a combination of topics including astronomy, general science and STEM, self-development, art, and societal commentary. In the past, Sarah worked in educational nonprofits providing free-choice learning experiences for audiences ages 2-99. As a lifelong space nerd, she loves sharing the universe with others through her words. She currently writes on Medium at https://medium.com/@sarah-marie and authors self-help and children’s books.

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August 18, 2020

The recent launch of the Mars rover Perseverance is the latest U.S. space mission seeking to understand our solar system. Its expected arrival at the Red Planet in mid-February 2021 has a number of objectives linked to science and innovation. The rover is equipped with sophisticated instruments designed to search for the remains of ancient microbial life, take pictures and videos of rocks, drill for soil and rock samples, and use a small helicopter to fly around the Jezero Crater landing spot .

Mars is a valuable place for exploration because it can be reached in 6 ½ months, is a major opportunity for scientific exploration, and has been mapped and studied for several decades. The mission represents the first step in a long-term effort to bring Martian samples back to Earth, where they can be analyzed for residues of microbial life. Beyond the study of life itself, there are a number of different benefits of Mars exploration.

Understand the Origins and Ubiquity of Life

The site where Perseverance is expected to land is the place where experts believe 3.5 billion years ago held a lake filled with water and flowing rivers. It is an ideal place to search for the residues of microbial life, test new technologies, and lay the groundwork for human exploration down the road.

The mission plans to investigate whether microbial life existed on Mars billions of years ago and therefore that life is not unique to Planet Earth. As noted by Chris McKay, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Science Center, that would be an extraordinary discovery. “Right here in our solar system, if life started twice , that tells us some amazing things about our universe,” he pointed out. “It means the universe is full of life. Life becomes a natural feature of the universe, not just a quirk of this odd little planet around this star.”

The question of the origins of life and its ubiquity around the universe is central to science, religion, and philosophy. For much of our existence, humans have assumed that even primitive life was unique to Planet Earth and not present in the rest of the solar system, let alone the universe. We have constructed elaborate religious and philosophical narratives around this assumption and built our identity along the notion that life is unique to Earth.

If, as many scientists expect, future space missions cast doubt on that assumption or outright disprove it by finding remnants of microbial life on other planets, it will be both invigorating and illusion-shattering. It will force humans to confront their own myths and consider alternative narratives about the universe and the place of Earth in the overall scheme of things.

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As noted in my Brookings book, Megachange , given the centrality of these issues for fundamental questions about human existence and the meaning of life, it would represent a far-reaching shift in existing human paradigms. As argued by scientist McKay, discovering evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars would lead experts to conclude that life likely is ubiquitous around the universe and not limited to Planet Earth. Humans would have to construct new theories about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Develop New Technologies

The U.S. space program has been an extraordinary catalyst for technology innovation . Everything from Global Positioning Systems and medical diagnostic tools to wireless technology and camera phones owe at least part of their creation to the space program. Space exploration required the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to learn how to communicate across wide distances, develop precise navigational tools, store, transmit, and process large amounts of data, deal with health issues through digital imaging and telemedicine, and develop collaborative tools that link scientists around the world. The space program has pioneered the miniaturization of scientific equipment and helped engineers figure out how to land and maneuver a rover from millions of miles away.

Going to Mars requires similar inventiveness. Scientists have had to figure out how to search for life in ancient rocks, drill for rock samples, take high resolution videos, develop flying machines in a place with gravity that is 40 percent lower than on Earth, send detailed information back to Earth in a timely manner, and take off from another planet. In the future, we should expect large payoffs in commercial developments from Mars exploration and advances that bring new conveniences and inventions to people.

Encourage Space Tourism

In the not too distant future, wealthy tourists likely will take trips around the Earth, visit space stations, orbit the Moon, and perhaps even take trips around Mars. For a substantial fee, they can experience weightlessness, take in the views of the entire planet, see the stars from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and witness the wonders of other celestial bodies.

The Mars program will help with space tourism by improving engineering expertise with space docking, launches, and reentry and providing additional experience about the impact of space travel on the human body. Figuring out how weightlessness and low gravity situations alter human performance and how space radiation affects people represent just a couple areas where there are likely to be positive by-products for future travel.

The advent of space tourism will broaden human horizons in the same way international travel has exposed people to other lands and perspectives. It will show them that the Earth has a delicate ecosystem that deserves protecting and why it is important for people of differing countries to work together to solve global problems. Astronauts who have had this experience say it has altered their viewpoints and had a profound impact on their way of thinking.

Facilitate Space Mining

Many objects around the solar system are made of similar minerals and chemical compounds that exist on Earth. That means that some asteroids, moons, and planets could be rich in minerals and rare elements. Figuring out how to harvest those materials in a safe and responsible manner and bring them back to Earth represents a possible benefit of space exploration. Elements that are rare on Earth may exist elsewhere, and that could open new avenues for manufacturing, product design, and resource distribution. This mission could help resource utilization through advances gained with its Mars Oxygen Experiment (MOXIE) equipment that converts Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. If MOXIE works as intended, it would help humans live and work on the Red Planet.

Advance Science

One of the most crucial features of humanity is our curiosity about the life, the universe, and how things operate. Exploring space provides a means to satisfy our thirst for knowledge and improve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.

Space travel already has exploded centuries-old myths and promises to continue to confront our long-held assumptions about who we are and where we come from. The next decade promises to be an exciting period as scientists mine new data from space telescopes, space travel, and robotic exploration. Ten or twenty years from now, we may have answers to basic questions that have eluded humans for centuries, such as how ubiquitous life is outside of Earth, whether it is possible for humans to survive on other planets, and how planets evolve over time.

The author would like to thank Victoria E. Hamilton, staff scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, for her helpful feedback on this blog post.

Why we explore Mars—and what decades of missions have revealed

In the 1960s, humans set out to discover what the red planet has to teach us. Now, NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s.

Mars has captivated humans since we first set eyes on it as a star-like object in the night sky. Early on, its reddish hue set the planet apart from its shimmering siblings, each compelling in its own way, but none other tracing a ruddy arc through Earth’s heavens. Then, in the late 1800s, telescopes first revealed a surface full of intriguing features—patterns and landforms that scientists at first wrongly ascribed to a bustling Martian civilization. Now, we know there are no artificial constructions on Mars. But we’ve also learned that, until 3.5 billion years ago, the dry, toxic planet we see today might have once been as habitable as Earth.

Since the 1960s, humans have set out to discover what Mars can teach us about how planets grow and evolve, and whether it has ever hosted alien life. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to the red planet, but that could soon change. NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s—and several new missions are launching before then to push exploration forward. Here’s a look at why these journeys are so important—and what humans have learned about Mars through decades of exploration.

Why explore Mars

Over the last century, everything we’ve learned about Mars suggests that the planet was once quite capable of hosting ecosystems—and that it might still be an incubator for microbial life today.

Mars is the fourth rock from the sun, just after Earth. It is just a smidge more than half of Earth’s size , with gravity only 38 percent that of Earth’s. It takes longer than Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun—but it rotates around its axis at roughly the same speed. That’s why one year on Mars lasts for 687 Earth days , while a day on Mars is just 40 minutes longer than on Earth.

Despite its smaller size, the planet’s land area is also roughly equivalent to the surface area of Earth’s continents —meaning that, at least in theory, Mars has the same amount of habitable real estate. Unfortunately, the planet is now wrapped in a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and cannot support earthly life-forms. Methane gas also periodically appears in the atmosphere of this desiccated world, and the soil contains compounds that would be toxic to life as we know it. Although water does exist on Mars, it’s locked into the planet’s icy polar caps and buried, perhaps in abundance, beneath the Martian surface .

Today, when scientists scrutinize the Martian surface, they see features that are unquestionably the work of ancient, flowing liquids : branching streams, river valleys, basins, and deltas. Those observations suggest that the planet may have once had a vast ocean covering its northern hemisphere. Elsewhere, rainstorms soaked the landscape, lakes pooled, and rivers gushed, carving troughs into the terrain. It was also likely wrapped in a thick atmosphere capable of maintaining liquid water at Martian temperatures and pressures.

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Somewhere during Martian evolution, the planet went through a dramatic transformation, and a world that was once rather Earthlike became the dusty, dry husk we see today. The question now is, what happened? Where did those liquids go, and what happened to the Martian atmosphere ?

Exploring Mars helps scientists learn about momentous shifts in climate that can fundamentally alter planets. It also lets us look for biosignatures, signs that might reveal whether life was abundant in the planet’s past—and if it still exists on Mars today. And, the more we learn about Mars, the better equipped we’ll be to try to make a living there, someday in the future.

Past missions, major discoveries

Since the 1960s, humans have sent dozens of spacecraft to study Mars . Early missions were flybys, with spacecraft furiously snapping photos as they zoomed past. Later, probes pulled into orbit around Mars; more recently, landers and rovers have touched down on the surface.

But sending a spacecraft to Mars is hard , and landing on the planet is even harder. The thin Martian atmosphere makes descent tricky, and more than 60 percent of landing attempts have failed. So far, four space agencies—NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)—have put spacecraft in Martian orbit. With eight successful landings, the United States is the only country that has operated a craft on the planet’s surface. The United Arab Emirates and China might join that club if their recently launched Hope and Tianwen-1 missions reach the red planet safely in February 2021.

Early highlights of Mars missions include NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft , which swung by Mars in July 1965 and captured the first close-up images of this foreign world. In 1971, the Soviet space program sent the first spacecraft into Martian orbit. Called Mars 3 , it returned roughly eight months of observations about the planet's topography, atmosphere, weather, and geology. The mission also sent a lander to the surface, but it returned data for only about 20 seconds before going quiet.

Over the subsequent decades, orbiters returned far more detailed data on the planet's atmosphere and surface, and finally dispelled the notion, widely held by scientists since the late 1800s, that Martian canals were built by an alien civilization. They also revealed some truly dramatic features: the small world boasts the largest volcanoes in the solar system, and one of the largest canyons yet discovered—a chasm as long as the continental United States. Dust storms regularly sweep over its plains, and winds whip up localized dust devils.

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In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully operate on the planet’s surface, returning photos until 1982. They also conducted biological experiments on Martian soil that were designed to uncover signs of life in space—but their results were inconclusive , and scientists still disagree over how to interpret the data.

NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission , launched in 1996, put the first free-moving rover—called Sojourner—on the planet. Its successors include the rovers Spirit and Opportunity , which explored the planet for far longer than expected and returned more than 100,000 images before dust storms obliterated their solar panels in the 2010s.

Now, two NASA spacecraft are active on the Martian surface: InSight is probing the planet’s interior and it has already revealed that “ marsquakes” routinely rattle its surface . The Curiosity rover , launched in 2012, is also still wheeling around in Gale Crater, taking otherworldly selfies, and studying the rocks and sediments deposited in the crater’s ancient lakebed.

Several spacecraft are transmitting data from orbit: NASA’s MAVEN orbiter , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , and Mars Odyssey ; ESA’s Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter ; and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission .

Together, these missions have shown scientists that Mars is an active planet that is rich in the ingredients needed for life as we know it—water, organic carbon , and an energy source. Now, the question is: Did life ever evolve on Mars , and is it still around?

Future of Mars exploration

Once every 26 months , Earth and Mars are aligned in a way that minimizes travel times and expense , enabling spacecraft to make the interplanetary journey in roughly half a year. Earth’s space agencies tend to launch probes during these conjunctions, the most recent of which happens in the summer of 2020. Three countries are sending spacecraft to Mars during this window: The United Arab Emirates, which launched its Hope spacecraft on July 20 and will orbit Mars to study its atmosphere and weather patterns; China, which launched its Tianwen-1 on July 23 , and the United States, currently targeting July 30 for the launch of its Perseverance rover .

Perseverance is a large, six-wheeled rover equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments. Its target is Jezero Crater, site of an ancient river delta , and a likely location for ancient life-forms to have thrived. Once on the surface, Perseverance will study Martian climate and weather, test technologies that could help humans survive on Mars, and collect samples from dozens of rocks that will eventually be brought to Earth. Among its goals is helping to determine whether Mars was—or is—inhabited, making it a true life-finding Mars mission.

All of the robotic activity is, of course, laying the groundwork for sending humans to the next world over. NASA is targeting the 2030s as a reasonable timeframe for setting the first boots on Mars, and is developing a space capsule, Orion , that will be able to ferry humans to the moon and beyond.

Private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX are also getting into the Mars game. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly said that humanity must become “ a multiplanetary species ” if we are to survive, and he is working on a plan that could see a million people living on Mars before the end of this century.

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Exploring Mars Together

NASA is reimagining the future of Mars exploration, driving new scientific discoveries, and preparing for humans on Mars.

Fascination with the Red Planet began with early astronomers in ancient Egypt. The Babylonians and the Greeks tracked the motion of the planet, while Galileo made the first telescope observations of Mars. Even today, when we look into the night sky and see the pale red dot above us, it inspires us to wonder about this nearby world.

NASA is reimagining the future of Mars exploration, driving new scientific discoveries, and preparing for humans on Mars. NASA’s Mars Exploration Program will focus the next two decades on its science-driven systemic approach on these strategic goals: exploring for potential life, understanding the geology and climate of Mars, and preparation for human exploration.

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The Future of Mars Plan

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is focusing on its future - delivering profound scientific investigation with a new strategic paradigm designed to send lower-cost, high-science-value missions and payloads to Mars at a higher frequency.

The Perseverance Rover is parked among the tracks it made in the soil of Mars.

Industry Engagement

The Mars Exploration Program is conducting preliminary activities to engage industry in understanding both NASA and commercial capabilities and needs.

A view of Mars showing a large crater across the middle of the red planet.

Mars Exploration Program

The Mars Exploration Program is a science-driven program that seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be, a habitable world.

The Future of Mars Plan 2023-2043

How We Explore Mars

To discover the possibilities for life on Mars, NASA uses science-driven robotic missions enabling us to explore Mars in ways we never have before.

Mars 2020: Perseverance Rover

The Mars 2020 mission Perseverance rover is the first step of a roundtrip journey to return Mars samples to Earth. (2020-present)

Rovers, helicopters, and rockets on Mars showing the robots that would collect and return a Mars sample

Mars Sample Return

NASA and ESA are planning ways to bring the first samples of Mars material back to Earth for detailed study. (Launching NET 2027)

Curiosity Rover

Curiosity is investigating Mars to determine whether the Red Planet ever was habitable to microbial life. (2011-present)

An illustration of a spacecraft over Mars

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

MRO explores the planet's atmosphere and terrain from orbit. It is also a crucial communications hub.

Mars News and Features

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Mars: Facts

Deep tire tracks are visible in the Martian sand where the Curiosity rover crossed over a dune on Mars.

Mars Resources

A Mars rover is parked among the tire tracks it made on Mars in this composite image.

Why are we going to Mars?

Earth’s planetary neighbour Mars has been a primary target for international robotic exploration efforts since the 1960s. Numerous US, Soviet, Japanese and European missions have flown to the Red Planet to understand the similarities and differences between Earth and Mars, with an emphasis on whether life ever existed on the Red Planet. There is ample evidence that liquid water existed and flowed on the surface of Mars in the past. Since on Earth, water is fundamentally linked to life, the obvious question arises: if there was water on Mars, has there ever been life? This remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in martian exploration and one that lies at the heart of the ExoMars programme.

The surface of Mars is dry and bathed in harsh radiation, and thus it is unlikely that life could exist there today. The best possible opportunity for the emergence of life on Mars was in the first billion years after the planet formed, when it was much warmer and wetter than today – similar to those present on the young Earth. Therefore, there might be evidence of past life preserved underground. Sampling the subsurface down to 2 m to search for such biomarkers is a key goal of the ExoMars 2020 rover.

In the meantime, the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter will follow a different approach by seeking out signs of life from Mars orbit. One of its key goals is to follow up on hints from previous missions that methane has been detected in the atmosphere, and in particular whether it is produced by geological or biological activity.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has the precision necessary to analyse the planet’s gases such as methane to a much higher sensitivity than any previous or current mission at Mars. It will also image and characterise features on the martian surface that may be related to sources such as volcanoes.

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The Mars methane mystery TGO science instruments

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Buzz Aldrin on Why We Should Go to Mars

The Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon dreams of a future where Americans are the first to walk on Mars

Amy Crawford

Contributing Writer

A member of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk on the moon. In the years since, he has become an advocate for space exploration and technology, calling for renewed U.S. investment in the space program. In Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration , Aldrin lays out a detailed, multi-stage plan for journeying to the red planet that would culminate in the first permanent human settlement beyond the Earth.

It’s been more than four decades since you landed on the moon. What’s your assessment of the U.S. space program since then?

The United States has had periods of ambition, but it has not financed them appropriately. Interest waned after the first Apollo landing on the moon. There was the conflict in Vietnam that attracted attention and financing and U.S. government support, and then a general disinterest by the American people in American leadership and technology. Our standing in education in the world, in science, technology, engineering and math, began to go up because of Apollo and then back down again. I’m trying to fix a lot of that.

The space shuttle has been the most high-profile program in the years since Apollo. Do you think it was a success?

It killed two crews, it was way over budget, and it hasn’t really accomplished what it set out to do. Of course we pioneered international cooperation and zero gravity experiments and we gained medical knowledge about long-term habitation in space. But the experiments were disappointing for the results of a national laboratory. We had to rely on Russian contributions to build the space station. And now the United States is financing the Russian space program in order to keep our people, in America, at our $100 billion space station, because we had to retire the shuttle.

NASA ended the space shuttle program in 2011. Do you think that was premature?

No, the program needed cancelling, but NASA and the U.S. had seven years between the beginning of 2004 and the end of 2010 to come up with a replacement for the shuttle, which it failed to do.

You’ve worried about the U.S. falling behind. Do you see other government space agencies doing better work? The Russians, for example, or the European Space Agency?

Well, they’re not well-financed either. But they continue to be able to transport crews to the $100 billion International Space Station. And the Chinese have advanced, with Russian assistance, to potentially surpass the United States.

During the Apollo program we were in a so-called “space race” with the Soviet Union. Do you think that it’s important for the U.S. to lead the world in space exploration, or should it be more of a partnership between nations?

Absolutely the United States should lead in space, for the survival of the United States. It’s inspiring for the next generation. If we lose leadership, then we’ll be using Chinese capability to inspire Americans.

You were critical of President Bush and NASA’s proposal to return to the moon, but the moon does play a role in your conception of a mission to Mars. Can you explain?

To send humans back to the moon would not be advancing. It would be more than 50 years after the first moon landing when we got there, and we’d probably be welcomed by the Chinese. But we should return to the moon without astronauts and build, with robots, an international lunar base, so that we know how to build a base on Mars robotically.

What would the moon base look like?

I think it should be an early version of a habitation module for a U.S. interplanetary spacecraft. We would put it there for testing temperature control, the temperature changes with 14 days of sunlight and 14 days of darkness on the moon, radiation protection—that’s absolutely necessary for venturing beyond the earth’s magnetic field.

After we build the moon base, you believe we should use what we learned and send humans to Mars’ moon, Phobos, to build a base on Mars.

That would be my preference. We’ve learned, with the robots Spirit and Opportunity on the surface of Mars, that you can’t control them adequately from the Earth. What we’ve done in five years on Mars could be done in one week—that’s a significant advance—if we had human intelligence in orbit around Mars. It’s much, much easier to send people there for a year and a half and then bring them back, before sending them back later to permanently land on Mars.

So to return to Earth, it’s easier to launch off Phobos than Mars, because Phobos is a smaller body with less gravity?

Yes. We need to build the base on Mars from orbit before sending people to the surface. And they will be permanent settlers and not return to earth, like the Pilgrims on the Mayflower left Europe.

You think we can actually get humans to live out their lives on Mars?

Absolutely.

How can people be persuaded to do that? You’d be asking them to sacrifice a lot. It’s a big step.

It wouldn’t be a problem, getting volunteers, fully capable people, to assume that mission for the rest of their lives. They will realize that they will go down in history. The pilgrims were a big step, too. Columbus was a big step. Magellan was a big step.

Why should humans colonize another planet?

There may be diseases, there may be nuclear conflict or there may be an impact by a very large asteroid that endangers the human race. Stephen Hawking says we have about 200 years. And I said to him, I think we could make it to another planet in less than 50 years.

President Kennedy famously announced in 1961 that we should send a man to the moon by the end of that decade. Do you think we need a similar declaration in order to kick start the Mars mission?

That is my goal. A leader on Earth who makes such a commitment will go down in history more than Alexander the Great, Queen Isabella or almost anyone. The 50 th anniversary celebrations of Apollo 11 through Apollo 17, between 2019 and 2022, should be a very significant time period for the leader of a country on Earth to make a commitment for human beings to establish permanence on another planet in the solar system. But instead of the one decade that Kennedy used for the moon, we would probably require two decades.

You’ve been a big supporter of space tourism, but so far it’s only been available to a wealthy few. Do you think it can lead to innovation?

Certainly it can, by inspiring young people, industry and the government. One of the first space tourists [Dennis Tito], buying his own ticket to fly on the Russian spacecraft to the Russian-augmented United States space station, is the initiator and the leader of “Inspiration Mars,” a proposal to fly a married couple around Mars and back in 2018.

What do you think of that idea?

It’s a very inspiring mission, which I strongly support. It would be a year and a half, for the crew, and we would learn many things about having people in space for a long duration: radiation exposure, the high-speed reentry, many other things. But the major thing is firing up our leaders and the people to adequately fund further exploration.

A lot of American technological genius these days seems to be devoted to social media and the Internet. Do you worry that our best minds are working on apps for your iPhone rather than trying to get us to Mars?

Not necessarily. That’s progress, and I’m trying to keep up with communication enhancement and information technology, so I can communicate with this younger generation. Sometimes people pay more attention to me than they do to the news from NASA. An example is “Dancing with the Stars,” the popular TV program. For many people I’m more known for that and several other television appearances than for the moon landing. I try and remain visible to the public. Your generation developed all of this technology, and I’m trying to catch up with all of it. But it obviously is a distraction, just like the Notre Dame football team and the Lone Ranger were for me growing up.

What was it like to walk on the moon?

My observation was, “Magnificent desolation.” It was magnificent for the human race to be able, as Neil Armstrong said, to take that step. But the desolation for the people taking that small step—it was more desolate than any scenery here on Earth.

What were your emotions when you were taking that step?

Caution, apprehension and exhilaration. Not fear. That comes after. I was following my commander and executing what we trained for.

Do you have a question for Buzz Aldrin? Ask him as a part of our “ The Future is Here ” conference on June 1. The answers will be filmed and streamed live from the event on that day.

He will also be signing copies of his book at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, from 11 am to 2 pm on June 1 in the museum gift shop.

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Amy Crawford | | READ MORE

Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist writing about cities, science, the environment, art and education. A longtime Smithsonian contributor, her work also appears in CityLab and the Boston Globe .

August 10, 2021

The Ethics of Sending Humans to Mars

We need to avoid the mistakes European countries made during the age of colonization

By Nicholas Dirks

An astronaut's booted foot close up, standing on Mars-red ground

Mark Garlick Getty Images

With Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson recently completing their pioneering space flights that could set the stage for future space tourism, it is worth taking a look at what might be involved for the human exploration of Mars, even though it’s likely decades away.

Elon Musk is perhaps the best-known advocate for going to Mars, but the idea is decades old. In a 1966 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences paper , Gordon R. Woodcock of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center theorized how the Saturn V launch vehicle—at the time in development for the Apollo lunar missions—could be used for a Mars exploration. Technical challenges aside, as we continue to expand our exploration of Mars, there is a broader ethical question at play. What might be the lessons of past voyages of discovery and colonization that we should be thinking about? History provides us with many cautionary tales.

Human exploration has led to many extraordinary new discoveries, but it has also led inexorably to the appropriation and exploitation of natural as well as human resources. The desire to gain control over various commodities such as spices, sugar and oil, propelled both global discovery and the drive for political and economic domination. During the age of empire, European nations derived their wealth and power from colonizing various global regions and controlling land, labor and military power to advance their own interests.

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After the early European settling of what would become the United States, the American colonists declared their independence from an unjust English authority and created the Constitution by which our modern society functions. This did not, however, prevent the settlers from referring to native people as savages and excluding them from the assertion of rights to liberty and happiness.

Then there is the question of “ownership”: does the first country that plants its flag on the surface of another world get to claim ownership? Such claims have been made many times before, and they do not bode any better for the future of space exploration than they have for human history on Earth. Clearly if we are to settle another planet—and likely it will be a multinational effort if we do—we’ll need to write a constitution for Mars, one that would learn from past mistakes, much like in the assignment set by Yale’s Hélène Landemore in a recent course on the political theory of constitutions.

Consider also the issue of Mars’ fragile ecosystem. The planet certainly has a hostile environment for human life, but on Mars, humans will be the invasive species with all that implies. The native occupants of the newly decolonized land of America were quickly decimated by systematic warfare and new diseases as the new settlers expanded their territory. The natural environment with which Native Americans had established a harmonious and symbiotic relationship, was similarly despoiled by the twin logic of expropriation and colonization that spread under the logic of manifest destiny .

Biological life aside, it is possible that Mars has minerals that could have extraordinary properties ideal for future development. We have seen on Earth how mining has had devastating environmental impacts; to think there would be anything less of an impact on the Martian environment is disingenuous.

Based on early missions and recent images sent from NASA’s Ingenuity and China’s Zhurong rover , the Martian landscape appears to be a frigid desert, with no visible trace of life. But the same could be said by aliens if they were to land in the vast desolation of the Gobi Desert. Given the first impression of Mars from pictures sent back by robotic explorers, notions of hostile creatures such as those envisioned in H.G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, and in movies such as Alien and Independence Day , seem unlikely. But we should be wary of characterizing “life” based solely on Earthly experience.

Stephen Hawking once warned that contact with an extraterrestrial civilization could result in the inevitable destruction of our own. Such an idea is not so far-fetched when you consider the current cost in human lives and economic devastation from a new Earth-based virus that blindsided us when we weren’t looking. While it is unlikely that we will be invaded by multilimbed creatures bent on Earth’s destruction using death rays, we cannot rule out the possibility that there could be a kernel of reality in Hawking’s prophecy.

The technological achievements of the teams at NASA and other space agencies are certainly to be applauded. And the contributions of the related research stemming from the fields of physics, material science, chemistry, medicine and many others is potentially limitless.

As we look to exploring worlds beyond our own, we need to begin now to look at history—while also adopting a more anthropological lens—to consider how best to engage with radically different life forms, cultures and environments. We may be capable of writing a new constitution and committing ourselves to an entirely new form of engagement with other places (and perhaps peoples), but we should begin with the presumption that we need to counter our own invasive impact on another planet that may be completely defenseless—before we embark on a new era of galactic exploration and imperial conquest.

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Space experts say sending humans to mars worth the risk.

Summit takes stock of hurdles, technologies, support needed to reach Red Planet by 2030s

MISSION TO MARS By the 2030s, NASA and the aerospace industry want to send a crew to explore Mars, seen in this simulated image based on data from the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

The Webb telescope’s peek into a stellar nursery finds baby planets too

An Apollo 11 astronaut places a seismometer on the surface of the moon.

Moonquakes are much more common than thought, Apollo data suggest

An image of a rock on Mars taken by the NASA rover Perseverance. Rocky white stripes flank a clay-colored area that is speckled with dark spots.

NASA’s Perseverance rover finds its first possible hint of ancient life on Mars

An illustration of a planet with blue watery oceans, reddish land, and an atmosphere, seen from above

A planet needs to start with a lot of water to become like Earth

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot may be less than 200 years old

Sulfur was key to the first water on Earth

Sif Mons on Venus with recent lava flow (arrow)

Venus might be as volcanically active as Earth

A weaker magnetic field may have paved the way for marine life to go big

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NASA Hopes To Land Humans On Mars By 2030. Is That A Good Thing?

April 30, 2021, file image taken by the Mars Perseverance rover. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter, right, flies over the surface of the planet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS via AP, File) AP hide caption

April 30, 2021, file image taken by the Mars Perseverance rover. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter, right, flies over the surface of the planet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS via AP, File)

For years, the idea of landing humans on Mars has seemed just out of reach.

But now, NASA is hoping it will happen by 2030.

While the technology may exist to reach Mars, will that same technology keep humans alive?

NPR's Scott Detrow talks to Kelly Weinersmith. With her husband Zach Weinersmith, she is co-author of the book A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?

Sign up for Consider This+ to hear every episode sponsor-free and support NPR. More information is at plus.npr.org/considerthis. This episode was produced by Marc Rivers. It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. Email us at [email protected].

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Why Should We Ever Send Humans to Mars?

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Adapted from The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees, published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

In the last 60 years, half a dozen spacecraft have flown past Mars, and 15 others have orbited the planet; seven have landed on Mars, and six rovers have traversed part of the Martian surface. Nearly two dozen spacecraft destined for Mars have failed in their efforts, some on the launch pad, some in interplanetary space, and some on the Martian surface. The first Martian fly-by (1964), the first Martian orbiter (1971), the first Martian landers (1976), and the first Martian rover (1996) testify to our stubbornness and problem-solving abilities in overcoming the obstacles to exploring another planet.

These successes may tend to obscure the most significant obstacle of missions to Mars, especially those that require providing life support to astronauts for months on end: It’s a long way to the Red Planet. As Mars and Earth orbit the sun, the distance between them varies by a factor of seven, from 35 million miles at their closest up to 250 million miles at their most distant. Reworking a simile provided by John McPhee, if you imagine the Earth-moon distance as a short fingernail clipping, the least Earth-Mars distance will run to your elbow, while the longest will span twice the width of your outstretched arms. The laws of gravity and planetary dynamics disfavor trips across the shortest path; instead, interplanetary travel to Mars typically covers 300 million miles, even more than the greatest distance to Mars, as the spacecraft swoops outward to overtake the planet. Using our best rocket technology, each journey requires nearly seven months.

The advantages that human explorers now hold over robots will continue to diminish as advances in A.I. and technology increase the robots’ abilities. Future breakthroughs in artificial intelligence could lead to self-guided Martian robots that would follow general instructions while performing the same tasks that human explorers would. We may use the Perseverance rover’s success on Mars to analyze the issue of how astronauts on Mars would improve the situation. What would change if we replaced a fully automated investigation with one with on-site humans? To take sample return as an example, the tasks involved include reaching Mars, choosing the best locations to sample, drilling into the rocks or soil at those locations, extracting material and sealing it for study, bringing the material to Earth, and examining the samples with the instruments best suited to that task. For all of these except the choice of drilling locations, robots rather than humans can perform more safely, more easily, and less expensively. They cannot match the brain of an experienced geologist—for now. Although our robots will continue to increase their artificial intelligence, no one knows when, if ever, they can match us humans, though we must beware of a bias in assessing our own proficiency.

For some people the idea of having humans on the ground provides the paramount reason for space exploration. In that context, the history of our efforts to study Mars appears as a 60-year prelude to the epoch when humans reach Mars and colonize it. Marvelous though this era will be, the issue remains not whether we want it as soon as possible but whether we need it as soon as possible. Consider this heartfelt exclamation from Jeffrey Hoffman, one of the scientist-astronauts who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. After five missions in space, Hoffman has no hesitation in saying, “I want to know what it’s like being on Mars!” For those of us who are not going there, the desire to put humans on Mars resides not in our own journey but in relishing the views and news from those who do reach the planet. Hoffman himself summarizes the robot/human issue by saying, “If it can be done robotically, do it.”

The scientific rationale for sending astronauts to Mars centers on the expectation that the long experience and human flexibility of scientifically trained astronauts will allow them to search through new locales and to discern special, perhaps unexpected features far more rapidly than any robot can. Steve Swanson, who flew twice on the space shuttle and once to the International Space Station, points to the fact that Apollo 17’s astronauts covered 22 miles on the moon in three days, while the Curiosity rover on Mars traveled about 12 miles in more than six years. Quite so—but Perseverance will cover Martian ground far more rapidly, and its successors will do still better. The same objection applies to the statement that Steve Squyres, one of the chief scientists for Curiosity’s predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, made in 2005: “The unfortunate truth is that most things our rovers can do in a perfect sol [one Martian day of 24 hours and 37 minutes], a human explorer on the scene could do in less than a minute.” In 2009, Squyres left academia to become the chief scientist at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin corporation, which plans to land cargo on the moon by 2023 and astronauts a year later.

Chris McKay, one of the leading astrobiologists involved in planning future missions to Mars, has spent years in the Arctic and Antarctic to study life under conditions as close to those on Mars as Earth offers. When will robots on Mars have abilities equal to those of a human field scientist? Not on the horizon, McKay says. What about abilities equal to those of a capable field assistant? That would require our robots’ current capabilities to be doubled at least five times, he thinks; he notes that at present each doubling requires more than a decade, “but innovations in the space biz may greatly shorten that.”

Those who want to make the strongest scientific case for astronauts on Mars should rely on McKay’s judgment to argue that in order to obtain the best result, we must send our best investigators: humans. The issue then becomes one of how much we are willing to pay for the advantages that humans can provide. Those who favor robots could stress that as more time elapses, the advantage humans hold over robots will continue to decline, eventually to the point that the scientific argument for astronauts disappears. Meanwhile, public enthusiasm for sending astronauts to Mars will persist, not so much because of the superiority of human geologists but instead because of the belief that we ought to go there.

How badly do we want to see humans on Mars? If you want to assess the strength of your own desire, try the following approach. Imagine that advances in technology could produce a superior form of virtual reality that would allow you to transport your senses to Mars, so that you could feel yourself walking on its surface, feeling the light Martian breezes, watching the sun set over Olympus Mons or Tharsis Tholus, or admiring temporary rivulets at the edge of the ice cap at the South Pole. How less satisfactory would this be than traveling to Mars in your actual body? And how much more important would it be for astronauts to reach Mars in person rather than by this advanced application of virtual exploration? If you believe that in-person exploration could reveal more than virtual exploration, you have judged that we need astronauts. But if you believe that we’re not really exploring Mars if we only do it virtually, then your stance reflects primarily your desire to see them on Mars.

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

By Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees. Belknap Press.

Honesty compels us to admit that this type of virtual reality probably could never occur, not least because of the many minutes required for any transmission between Earth and Mars. But try the mental experiment not with Mars but with Mount Everest: How different would it be for you to experience everything that a climber does without being physically present on the mountain?

“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids,” Elton John famously sang in his song “Rocket Man.” A lot of people who want to see human settlement on our neighbor planet think he’s wrong. And yes, exploring Mars—understanding its geology, searching for traces of ancient life and for possible existing life in places where liquid water exists, uncovering Mars’s history and how it fits into the origin and evolution of the solar system, flying drones that can map the entire surface of the planet and discover individual locations of intense interest—is a marvelous goal that fascinates all of us. But to achieve this, we don’t need astronauts, whose presence inevitably degrades their surroundings—something that is of special concern if we hope to be sure that any life forms we may discover are indeed Martian. When we send our ever-improved robots there, they confirm that we are indeed on Mars—not individual humans, but all of us, the earthly species that has the ability to explore another planet in an efficient and ecologically sound manner.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate , New America , and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

5 undeniable reasons humans need to colonize Mars — even though it's going to cost billions

Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity.

At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz Aldrin , Stephen Hawking , Elon Musk , Bill Nye , and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying.

Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars each , could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now.

"If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before," Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary .

That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars:

1. Ensuring the survival of our species

The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed.

The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

"Humans need to be a multiplanet species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait.

Humans need to be a multiplanet species. — Elon Musk

Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen.

Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

2. Discovering life on Mars

Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today . Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there.

One monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA's rovers can . The theory there is that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on Mars .

The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth . None of those, however, have shown signs of life.

"You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey , a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth

"Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth."

British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars .

At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example:

During its first three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images.

It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye.

"You can't script that. That happens all the time — this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

It's impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before.

4. Growing as a species

Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars , he answered:

"Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians," he said. "The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now."

Humanity's aspirations to explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another.

"Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does."

5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership

At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy.

"In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars," he said .

If Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds.

"If you lose your space edge," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, "my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically."

Watch: ELON MUSK: Here's How We Can Fix Mars And Colonize It

Main content

On a planet where you cannot breathe, is living on Mars the best idea?

Elton john might have said it best in his iconic song, "rocket man" — "mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.".

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Elton John might have said it best in his iconic song "Rocket Man" – "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids."

More than 50 years after we sent humans to the moon – the closest celestial body to Earth – the plan is still to head to Mars , something many astronauts who have flown in space thought we would have already accomplished.

"I just assumed by the time I got to be old enough to go into the space program, you know we'd be living on Mars or I'd be working on Mars just as a scientist," Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space, told university students at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in December 2019.

But despite the fact humankind has been unable to send anyone to another place in the universe besides the moon, there are still many with the hopes and expectation that we will become a multi-planetary species in the near future, starting with our red next-door neighbor.

Billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and aspiring young astronauts like Alyssa Carson , a sophomore studying astrobiology at Florida Tech, hope to one day live on Mars.

"Eventually the sun will run out of fuel to burn … and conditions on Earth are going to be very different from our normal regular life now," Carson told Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network. "It's not necessarily saying Mars is the savior here … but Mars is that first step in getting people a bit more accustomed to even thinking about living on other planets and being able to colonize someplace else."

Even Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX, was founded with the "ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets," according to its website .

But how feasible is that? Do we want to settle on a planet where we can't even breathe?

The bottom line: Money

According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, we have the technological capability to go to Mars. The problem is money, or lack thereof.

Under Space Policy Directive 1, President Donald Trump tasked NASA with sending the next man and first woman to the moon by 2024 and then eventually heading on to Mars. But this isn't the first time a president has said we're going back to the moon or we're finally sending humans to the Red Planet.

After John F. Kennedy made his declaration that we would "put a man on the moon," several other presidents have tried to walk in his footsteps. But unlike Kennedy, none have come close to succeeding.

On the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11 in 1989, President George H.W. Bush said we would return to the moon and go on to Mars, but in the end, the price proved too high.

His son President George W. Bush echoed the same goal.

Under the Constellation program, the plan was to return to the moon by 2020 and then head to Mars, but the project was ultimately scrapped after a series of delays and increasingly high costs.

President Barack Obama also hoped to go to Mars. Instead of proposing returning to the moon, however, Obama said we should send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 before moving on to Mars. Congressional Republicans rejected the idea, and nothing came to fruition.

Then came Trump's turn.

After heading back to the moon in the next four years under the Artemis program, the next big milestone would be a trip to Mars.

But again, the problem boils down to spending what's necessary to send astronauts there, Bridenstine said.

"The question isn't whether or not we're technologically capable of doing it, because we are. The question is whether or not we have the political will to do it," he told reporters at Kennedy Space Center in July for NASA's Mars Perseverance rover launch.

The Apollo program, Bridenstine pointed out, was driven by the need to beat the Soviet Union to the moon, which is why Congress appropriated vast sums of money to NASA. Today, that's no longer the case.

With no Cold War to encourage federal spending on the program, NASA instead is looking to international partners to help pay for any trip to Mars.

"Today we don't have that large power competition that we had back then, but what we do have is we have international partners, we have commercial partners, we have technological advances that are so far beyond what we had in the 1960s," Bridenstine said. "So the answer is yes, we can do it. The question is: Will we receive the budget to do it right now?"

It is unclear how much support the incoming Biden administration is going to give the Artemis program.

Money is also an issue for SpaceX's Mars plans.

As a private company, SpaceX can't rely solely on taxpayer dollars to send humans there. Instead, the aerospace company is looking for other revenue streams to help pay for a Mars mission, such as its Starlink internet constellation.

Aside from providing internet connection to people living in remote areas around the world, Starlink will also help fund SpaceX's goal of having people live on Mars – or at least, that's the plan.

But first, Starlink has to be successful.

'On Mars, there's nothing to breathe'

Not everyone believes sending people to live on Mars is the right move, however.

Bill Nye, CEO for the Planetary Society and famously known as "Bill Nye the Science Guy" for his TV show that aired in the '90s, is one of those who doesn't believe in setting up camp on Mars.

"I would love to go to space, you guys. But this idea of living on another world where we can't be outside just doesn't sound that appealing," Nye told reporters in 2019 before the launch of the Light Sail 2 project he and other Planetary Society members had worked on.

"You think you want to go to Venus? We'd be vaporized in a second, way less than a second," Nye said. "And then on Mars, there's nothing to breathe. There's nothing to breathe, people. It's not just there's nothing to eat, there's nothing to breathe. So, you know if you live in a dome and you go outside, you're going to put on a spacesuit and you're in another dome, like my good friend Sandy the squirrel," referencing the character from the children's TV show "SpongeBob SquarePants."

I would love to go to space, you guys. But this idea of living on another world where we can't be outside just doesn't sound that appealing.

And as of now, that's really the only option for humans to live on Mars – a dome. It would essentially be like how actor Matt Damon' character lived in the sci-fi film "The Martian."

Even the author of "The Martian," on which the sci-fi film is based, doesn't believe we're close to having a human settlement on Mars.

"Mars is horribly inhospitable," Andy Weir told Florida Today via email. "Though it's an awesome idea – living on Mars – it would be far easier to colonize Earth's ocean floor. There won't be a significant settlement on Mars until there's an economic reason for a city to exist there. Like Antarctica, the only people there are researchers because there's no reason to be there otherwise."

So like Nye, Weir isn't inclined live on Mars.

"Nope! I write about brave people, but I'm not one of them," Weir said." I like Earth and plan to stay."

Others argue there's another way to live on Mars that doesn't include living in a dome. The only problem is the logistics of changing the Martian landscape into one that can support human life.

Terraforming vs. in-situ resources

Called "terraforming," this essentially involves transforming Mars into a more Earth-like habitat. It's what Musk has proposed doing and what astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson believes would be best if humans were to live on Mars.

“Elon Musk has a plan. He’s thinking of putting satellites in orbit that have big reflectors that focus sunlight that would otherwise miss the planet. Focus it down on the planet and just add more energy to the planet, heating it up, and if you do it right, you might be able to set sort of a chain reaction in place," deGrasse Tyson said in his podcast, "StarTalk."

"If everything is frozen and it gets warmer, you’ll evaporate more carbon dioxide, and that’ll help trap more heat, and then that’ll make it hotter to evaporate even more carbon dioxide," he said. "You get all of that out of the system and into the atmosphere. Then now it’s warm enough, now you’re still mostly greenhouse gases, you still need oxygen to breathe. So now you put microorganisms that eat the CO2 and they release oxygen.”

But terraforming Mars isn't going to happen anytime soon. Not only is the technology not available to do so, but the question also becomes, "How long would that take?"

“That’s the big problem. Is it a thousand years, is it a million years? Or can you speed it up with some fast-acting microbes? This remains to be established,” deGrasse Tyson said. “But I’m telling you that if we’re going to be a two-planet species, I’m thinking you have to terraform Mars for that to happen.”

Yet not everybody agrees with that tactic, especially because that would change the whole geology of Mars.

"I’ve never been someone that has been a fan of terra-transforming a planet to make it more Earth-like. I think that the excitement of going to a different planet would be utilizing the in-situ resources that are there," NASA astronaut Christina Koch told deGrasse Tyson on his podcast.

But I’m telling you that if we’re going to be a two-planet species, I’m thinking you have to terraform Mars for that to happen.

"So, I would see something like a sustainable Mars establishment, to me, would always require some type of resupply, and even if that’s just to make it livable and habitable in terms of what humans think of as habitable and livable, I think is the important thing. But using the in-situ resources as well,” she said.

In other words, living in that dome-like structure.

Florida Tech professor and plant biochemist Andrew Palmer also believes using in-situ resources to live on Mars is the best plan.

He, along with other researchers at the university are collaborating on how future Mars settlers can use the resources , namely the soil on Mars to grow their own food.

"So the whole premise of this project, it all falls under something that's called in-situ resource utilization, which is a simple way of just saying using what's already there. So what we want to do is establish how little do you need to bring from Earth in order to be self-sufficient," Palmer told Florida Today. "Mars is about six months away. If something goes wrong on Mars and you're unable to get a rocket to Mars to rescue people, they need to have their own food."

By studying various simulated Martian soils, Palmer and his colleagues hope to determine what else is needed to help grow crops on Mars, especially since the Martian soil may not be able to host plant life.

"If I go take a sample of soil on Florida Tech campus and then I went out beachside and I took a soil sample there, those are not going to be the same, and the same is true on Mars," Palmer said.

That's problematic for future Mars settlers. What if they get to Mars and all of a sudden they can't grow anything there?

To avoid that, Palmer suggests sending a robotic greenhouse in advance.

"In our mind, one way to do this would be you land robots there six months in advance, and you inflate a tent and you start working on the soil, all remotely, and colonists get there and the soil is ready to grow," Palmer said.

When discussing what crops would be best to grow on Mars and what other nutrients settlers would need, Palmer recommends crops like potatoes, corn, radishes and kale. As for protein, Palmer says, insects are the way to go.

"Trying to grow a cow on Mars, that's a huge amount of resource investment, but growing insects, it's a very cheap investment, relatively speaking," Palmer said.

The other option could be to grow synthetic meats.

Besides just the different eating habits and living arrangements humans would have to get accustomed to if they lived on Mars, life would be very different from Earth, perhaps more environmentally friendly, because nearly everything would have to be recycled.

But that might not be all that enticing to future colonists.

"In a Martian colony, (the settlers) will have never not had water that was made from previous urine, and their entire world will be completely recycled and reused," Palmer said.

'Let's save our future'

But even with a Mars establishment, others don't believe Mars should be the final destination or a "colony" at all.

"I think going to Mars is fine – it's not a final place to go. I mean, you know, it's like just going to the moon but it's a little further out," the late Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden told Florida Today in November 2019.

"When the sun burns out, Mars is going to go too, along with the Earth," Worden said. "We'd be better off solving all the problems we've got here (on Earth) than colonizing Mars. What we need is an Earth-like planet in another solar system somewhere."

But if humans haven't even been able to head back to the moon since 1972, the odds of trying to head to a planet in another solar system is nothing more than science fiction at this point.

Technological challenges aside, will humans even live long enough to travel and settle on another planet?

"That's my greatest concern," Worden said. "We're not very good to each other here, and we don't seem to care about the things that will sustain this place to live in for a long time. … I think we're doing more damage to ourselves and the planet that it may be of such an extent that we don't have to wait till the sun burns out – we're going to do it ourselves."

He's not the only one who thinks so.

In a July 2019 Pew Research Center study , 63% of Americans said NASA's top priorities should be using space to monitor key parts of Earth’s climate system. Meanwhile, only 13% believe sending astronauts to the moon should be a top priority. That figure jumps to a mere 18% for a crewed mission to Mars.

Former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post in 2019 stating NASA should focus its resources on saving our planet instead of heading to other celestial bodies.

"The public is right about this. Climate change – not Russia, much less China – is today’s existential threat. Data from NASA satellites show that future generations here on Earth will suffer from food and water shortages, increased disease and conflict over diminished resources," Garver said.

Data from NASA satellites show that future generations here on Earth will suffer from food and water shortages, increased disease and conflict over diminished resources.

Instead of focusing on sending humans to the moon or Mars, Garver said, NASA should create a Climate Corps "in which scientists and engineers spend two years in local communities understanding the unique challenges they face, training local populations and connecting them with the data and science needed to support smart, local decision-making."

"Apollo’s legacy should not be more meaningless new goals and arbitrary deadlines," Garver said. "Let’s not repeat the past. Let’s try to save our future. Besides, humanity’s intrinsic need to explore is driven by our need to survive."

Can humans even survive on Mars?

The coronavirus pandemic leads to another important question about interplanetary travel: What if we got stuck with another pandemic, only this time while humans were in space?

It's hard enough to live on a planet where you can't breathe, let alone have a highly contagious virus spreading like wildfire.

A key thing we have come to understand from COVID-19 is those with weaker immune systems have a harder time recovering. For the future explorers venturing to live on Mars, they might all end up having weak immune systems.

A study published last year by NASA scientists revealed astronauts who have endured long space voyages such as the shuttle missions and International Space Station flights were more vulnerable to diseases such as herpes, chickenpox and shingles.

The cause? Pretty much what you’d expect from any potentially treacherous space voyage: stress.

“So far, 47 out of 89 (53%) astronauts from short-duration space shuttle flights, and 14 out of 23 (61%) from long-duration ISS spaceflight missions shed at least one or more herpes viruses in their saliva or urine samples,” the study states.

When astronauts venture out into space, they are faced with several extraterrestrial hazards, including cosmic radiation, microgravity and gravitational forces like acceleration and deceleration.

But those aren't the only stress factors they're exposed to. Throughout an astronaut's space mission, they are forced to endure social separation, confinement, sleep deprivation, circadian rhythm disruption and increased anxiety.

All this exposure contributes to dysregulation in the astronaut’s immune and endocrine systems.

So what does this mean for potentially longer space exploration missions and the humans embarking on those quests?

“Although NASA believes there is no clinical risk to astronauts during orbital spaceflight, there is concern that during deep-space exploration missions there may be clinical risks related to ‘viral shedding,’” lead study author Satish Mehta at Johnson Space Center told Florida Today via email.

“Ultimately, the information gleaned from these space studies will shape the way we prepare for and design exploration-class missions, beyond the moon and Mars, where reactivation of latent viruses could result in increased risk for wide-ranging adverse medical events,” according to the study.

Aside from the physical ramifications that living in space or other planets like Mars would cause on the human body, there's also a psychological toll that will affect those living far from Earth and their loved ones.

"Being apart from your family, your friends, your loved ones is a challenge," NASA astronaut Nick Hague told actor Brad Pitt last year before the premiere of his sci-fi film "Ad Astra."

"It's easier here in low-Earth orbit because communications is almost without delay. As we push further and deeper into space, those challenges will become more difficult with communications delays and just being able to stay in contact with those friends and loved ones."

You can share your thoughts about FLORIDA TODAY's space coverage with Space Editor John McCarthy. You can reach him at [email protected]

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Many spacecraft have died trying to get to Mars. The current record for Mars missions is 18 successes, and 25 failures. The InSight mission hopes to improve the odds.

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Listen to the Podcast

[:05] Narrator: Come with me on a mission to outer space. Our destination is the planet Mars.

We have to travel over 300 million miles. That may seem like a long trip, but we’ll be speeding through space at 13,000 miles an hour.

(intro music montage)

[:049] Welcome to “On a Mission,” a podcast of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California. I’m Leslie Mullen. I’m a science journalist, and I arrived at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory – also known as JPL — 2 years ago.

[1:04] The Lab is a jumble of buildings at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, and just down the road from Hollywood. But at JPL, they’re focused on stars of a different sort. JPL is like a little town, but a town full of scientists and engineers who study the mysteries of the universe and build robots to send to outer space. In my short time here, I’ve discovered there are a million stories to tell.

[1:28] The concept of this podcast is to take a close look at a single space mission, and examine it from different angles. To share the science, yes, but also the struggle and satisfaction in getting a mission off the ground. For this first season, the focus will be on the InSight mission to Mars.

[1:46] (rocket launch of InSight)

[2:13] A rocket carrying the InSight mission launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California earlier this year, on May 5th. It is now on its way to Mars, due to arrive at the end of November. After it lands, the robotic suite of instruments will peek below the planet’s surface, investigating the different layers that make up Mars.

[2:34] You may already know that Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. Earth is the third planet from the Sun, so Mars is a little farther out than we are. On a clear night when you can see the stars, you may have noticed one that looked a little reddish. Sunlight bouncing off the Martian red rocks makes it look like just another star, but Mars is world: a harsh, desert, alien world.

[3:01] Over the years, NASA has sent many spacecraft to Mars. But it’s still a mysterious place, in many ways, one that we’ve only just begun to explore.

[3:10] But Mars does not welcome visitors with open arms. Many spacecraft have died trying to get there. So far there have been 43 robotic missions sent to Mars – many from the US, but Europe and Russia and even India and China have tried to go there. The current record for Mars missions is 18 successes, and 25 failures.

[3:34] Granted, some of those failures can’t be blamed on Mars – some missions, especially early on, came to an abrupt end due to rockets blowing up on the launch pad or not getting very far past Earth. But still, less than half of the missions ever sent to Mars have made it. The InSight mission hopes to improve the odds.

[3:57] Soon after InSight launched from Earth, on Mars, one of the biggest dust storms in history swirled into life.

[4:04] Bruce Banerdt: Dust storms tend to pop up on Mars on a pretty regular basis. In fact, there’s a dust storm season on Mars. Some seasons there’s small dust storms, and some seasons there are huge dust storms. And we actually just got hit with one of the big ones.

[4:17] Narrator: That’s Bruce Banerdt, the scientist leading the InSight mission. He and the InSight team were first alerted to the storm from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite circling Mars. A rover on the ground, named Opportunity, sent photos back to Earth of the Martian sky growing dusty and dark, until the Sun disappeared in the sky.

[4:38] The storm grew until it covered most of Mars. We don’t have weather like this on Earth. Our storms are located in one place, and then drift to another area or disperse entirely. We’ve never, for instance, had a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean grow and grow until it becomes a single storm enveloping most of the planet.

[4:59] But this is not the first time we’ve seen such a large storm on Mars. When NASA’s Mariner 9 orbiter reached Mars in 1971, it saw a global dust storm that was so immense, only the tops of the tallest volcanoes could be seen peeking above the haze. The Mars Global Surveyor satellite witnessed a similar massive storm in 2001.

[5:20] Those orbiters saw the storms from high above. The Viking 1 lander, in 1977, was the first time we got to see such a big dust storm from the ground. Because Viking was actually in the storm, it also could gauge the force of the winds, which topped 60 miles per hour.

[5:38] Some of you may be thinking of the beginning of the movie, “The Martian,” which saw Matt Damon’s character knocked down by a raging dust storm on Mars.

[5:46] Movie clip :”The Martian” storm:

Lewis: 1200 kilometers in diameter, bearing 24.41 degrees.

Johanssen: That’s tracking right towards us.

Lewis: Based on current escalation, estimated force of… 8600 Newtons?

Watney: What’s the abort force?

Beck: 7500.

Martinez: Anything more than that, and the MAV could tip.

Lewis: Begin abort procedure.

Watney: Let’s wait it out.

Lewis: Prep emergency departure. We’re scrubbed, that’s an order!

Lewis: Visibility’s almost zero. Anyone gets lost, home in to my suit’s telemetry. You ready?

Watney: Ready!

[Door opens to massive dust storm]

Watney: Commander, are you ok?

Lewis: I’m ok!

[6:27] Narrator: It makes for good drama, but the air is so thin on Mars — only 1 percent as dense as air on Earth — that even the strongest winds wouldn’t knock you down. In the movie, the roaring winds that rocked their spacecraft and forced them to abort the mission would actually feel like a gentle breeze.

( sound effect: waves on a beach)

[6:54] To understand how such strong winds wouldn’t feel strong, imagine you’re at the beach. A wave comes up and knocks you down. The wave is moving slowly compared to the air, but because the water is so much more dense than the air, it doesn’t take much to lift you off your feet. The opposite is what happens with the thin air of Mars. Although the winds there don’t pack a punch, they are able to pick up fine dust particles and loft them high into the air.

[7:20] Bruce Banerdt : Mars dust is extremely fine, and it’s very easy to lift up in the atmosphere. And without any moisture to have the dust particles clump together, it takes a long time for it to settle out. So these dust storms tend to kick up really fast and then die off really slowly and even after the wind’s all gone, you still have a lot of dust up there which is absorbing the sun and making it kind of dark down on the surface.

[7:40] Narrator: InSight has to enter the atmosphere of Mars, descend down through it, and land on the planet’s surface. This is known as EDL – entry, descent, and landing. On Mars, the atmosphere is thick enough to burn you up on entry, but thin enough to make landing with a parachute extremely tricky. This is why Mars landings often include rockets firing toward the ground – so-called retro-rockets — that help slow down the descent. The InSight mission is prepared to go through Entry-Descent-and-Landing for a range of conditions, including a dust storm.

[8:12] Bruce Banerdt : Those little dust particles, when you’re coming in at 15,000 miles per hour, they do act as a little bit of a sand blaster. And when we designed our spacecraft, we knew that we were coming in during dust season, so we actually added about a half an inch of extra material on the heat shield, the ablative material that actually burns off as you go into the atmosphere. The calculations and the experiments that we did on the material indicated that that was more than enough to accommodate the extra erosion that we would experience if there was dust in the atmosphere. So, even if there is still dust in the atmosphere when we land, our entry system should be perfectly happy with that kind of environment, and the parachute won’t even notice it.

[8:50] Narrator: It can take months for dust from such a big storm to slowly settle out of the air. If there’s a lot of dust in the air when InSight lands, the biggest problem for the lander will be power generation. InSight runs on solar power. Falling dust not only blocks the sunlight, it also could coat the solar panels, causing InSight to run out of energy.

[9:13] Opportunity rover, who got caught in the dust storm, is also solar powered. It went into hibernation soon after the dust storm appeared, in order to save power.

[9:22] The power does more than run the rover; it keeps it warm on frigid Martian nights. Temperatures in Opportunity’s neighborhood – the Martian equator — can dip down to negative one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit, or negative 90 Celsius. Without a heater, the rover could freeze to death. It’s similar to running a car in the winter so the cold doesn’t sap the battery charge. The Martian cold may have been what ultimately killed Opportunity’s twin rover, Spirit, back in 2010.

[9:51] Opportunity is currently the longest-running mission on the surface of Mars. It’s been in operation for over 14 years, since 2004, and it survived a large dust storm in 2007. That storm led to two weeks of minimal operations, including several days with no contact from the rover, in order to save power.

[10:11] Opportunity has been in hibernation now since June 10th. Dust storms do heat the air up on Mars, so it’s possible Opportunity wasn’t fatally damaged by the cold. In September, enough dust had settled out of the atmosphere that sunlight could penetrate through the haze and recharge the solar panels.

[10:29] While waiting for the rover to wake up, to boost the team’s morale, engineers have started each day playing a song in Mission Control.

(music: Wake Me Up, Before you Go-Go )

[10:41] Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go, by Wham, is just one of many songs dedicated to the sleeping rover.

[10:52] Over the weeks their themed playlist has included “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty, “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, and “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas.

(music: Dust in the Wind)

[11:07] Opportunity, meanwhile, remains silent and still. Mission engineers will keep listening for the rover to phone home over the next few months.

[11:18] What InSight will have to struggle with when it arrives on Mars is still to be determined.

[11:21] Bruce Banerdt : We have a lot more solar power generation capability than Opportunity, but I think that our design would be at best marginal against the darkest part of the dust storm. Once we get to Mars, if we have a dust storm like that again, it would be pretty nerve-wracking for us.

( Dust in the Wind lyrics: “Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky…” )

[11:43] Narrator: InSight science lead Bruce Banerdt has had his heart broken by Mars before. Years ago, he worked on the Mars Observer mission.

[11:51] Bruce Banerdt : My early career I sort of was kind of a recluse. I’d go in my office, and I’d lock the door, and just work on my computer and hope nobody ever bothered me. But then somebody came and said, “Well, we need someone to work on this space mission.” Or, “We need a scientist to help integrate this altimeter that is going to go to Mars on Mars Observer.”

[12:08] Narrator: An altimeter is used to create elevation maps that show the heights of mountains and the depths of canyons.

[12:14] Bruce Banerdt : This was going to be the first detailed elevation map of any planet outside the Earth, and it’s something that’s really critical, if you want to look at what forces there are on a planetary crust. And by the time we launched, I thought, “Well, finally we’re going to Mars, and all our problems are behind us.” And then we got close to Mars. We did our last trajectory correction maneuver before going into Mars orbit, and we never heard from it again.

[12:42] Back in ’93 I guess, which is when this was all happening, we didn’t have the fancy displays and the animations. So when we had to turn this spacecraft to do this orbit trajectory change maneuver, we slewed away from the Earth point on the radio, so we lost contact. It was supposed to fire its rockets for 40 seconds or something like that, and then turn her back around and then we reacquire the signal. We had an old CRT monitor hooked up to the DSN data feed with the signal strength just as a line across, sort of like one of those old oscilloscope displays. It turned away, and so the line goes flat at zero power. At 20 minutes or 40 minutes later, it’s supposed to kind of blip back up again and show our signal line. One of the young engineers on the project was keeping track of the time, had his pencil there on the screen, and says, “Right about here’s where we ought to get it.” We were watching, and it kept on going flat. I said, “Well, maybe we’re having a little bit of trouble acquiring.” And so, you’re just waiting for something to happen, and it’s not happening, and it’s not happening. At first, there’s lots of explanations why that not might not be true. And then there’s fewer explanations that are still consistent with it being that long. And then maybe there’s one or two things that might have gone wrong that are still not fatal, but it’s a slow motion train wreck, that you’re getting more and more of a sinking feeling and trying to stay optimistic, but there’s always a voice in the back of your mind going, “Uh oh, this isn’t good.”

[14:07] We waited to acquire the signal, and it didn’t show up. That flat line never did leave zero. That was a really, really horrible feeling to have worked on something for five or six years, and then suddenly it’s all gone. Later on, they found a design flaw in the propulsion system, which likely allowed the fuel to mix with the oxidizer in the wrong place, and probably blow a hole in the side of the spacecraft.

[14:32] When Mars Observer was lost, we took the same payload, or part of the same payload, and started a new mission with kind of the same designs, but a little bit different spacecraft called Mars Global Surveyor, which launched about four years later. It kind of just merged from Mars Observer into Mars Global Surveyor. I ended up actually working on that project for about 20 years, and it was a great project. I mean, the MOLA maps of Mars — if you’ve ever seen the map that’s kind of blue and orange, that’s our MOLA elevation map that I played a small part in helping to create. These were the first really high-resolution images that we had of Mars. You started revealing the actual geology of Mars at a level where you can visualize as a human being, and not as somebody flying in an airplane two miles up or something. That’s been one of the foundational datasets for Mars for understanding all kinds of things about that planet. That was an amazing project. That was so much fun.

[15:27] Narrator: As Bruce notes, although Mars Observer failed, the design was re-used for the successful Mars Global Surveyor. Spacecraft are often made this way. InSight, for instance, is essentially using the same architecture as the Phoenix lander that made discoveries near the Martian North Pole over ten years ago. The Phoenix lander, meanwhile, rose from the ashes of the Mars Polar Lander that crashed in 1999.

[15:58] Rob Grover oversees the Entry-Descent-and-Landing procedures InSight needs to go through in order to land on Mars.

[16:07] Rob Grover: We can’t really do full testing on Earth because the gravity is different, the atmosphere is different. We use simulation for making sure that we’re going to be successful when we land on Mars. We use a method called a Monte Carlo Simulation, which, it’s named for a game of chance, which is a little bit of what EDL is.

[16:26] So when we run the Monte Carlo simulation, we actually land eight thousand times and it provides us statistics on how we’ll perform. We randomize all the parameters that are used in modeling the landing, like the mass of the lander and how well the rocket engines are working. For each type of atmosphere we think we’re going to land in, we run a Monte Carlo. Each flight path angle or angle we’re going to hit the atmosphere we also run a Monte Carlo too. We have actually close to probably a thousand parameters. That allows us to practice the landing under multiple conditions. We do many many many Monte Carlos. For a single landing, we’ve probably run millions of times at this point over the five or so years we’ve been doing this.

[17:11] There’s a little bit of rolling the dice on EDL but we try to account for everything we possibly can. It’s a risky part of the mission, probably one of the riskiest six and a half minutes of the mission. As EDL engineers, our job is really to try and think of every possible thing that can go wrong, everything that Mars can throw at us and try and model that and make sure that the system will be able to handle that on landing day.

[17:32] Insight is the first mission to land during dust storm season. That makes it particularly challenging because the atmosphere affects the landing quite a bit. With the dust storm season, we could be landing in the middle of a global dust storm or the atmosphere could be just a regular clear atmosphere or anywhere in between. That makes a lot more variation that we have to account for when we’re designing and executing the landing. So it makes it more challenging for Insight than past missions in that respect.

[18:01] Narrator: As InSight approaches Mars this November, we’ll all be on the edge of our seats, watching for that signal, waiting to see if it beats the odds, and survives.

[18:11] But InSight almost died before it even left Earth.

[18:14] Bruce Banerdt : We had a lot of problems with InSight, and then we had to stand down from our launch in December of 2015, which was incredibly disappointing. It was really a dark time. It was almost Christmas, and then we had to give up suddenly on this mission.

[18:30] Narrator: More about that, next time.

(out music)

[18:34] If you like this podcast, rate us on iTunes and Soundcloud, and share us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We’re hashtag: nasaonamission. Also check out NASA’s other podcasts: Gravity Assist, Rocket Ranch, What’s Up, NASA in Silicon Valley, and Houston We Have a Podcast. They can all be found on NASA’s podcast page or on most podcast platforms. We’re “On a Mission,” a podcast of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

(out music — finis)

[19:09 run time]

It’s a wonderful world — and universe — out there.

Come explore with us!

Science News Explores

‘percy’, nasa’s rover, finds its first hint of ancient life on mars.

This strengthens the case for bringing pieces of Mars back to Earth for closer study

The Mars Perseverance rover examined this rock on July 21. It found leopard spot–like features speckling clay-colored parts of it. These resemble structures in Earth rocks that have been linked to microbial life.

MSSS/JPL-Caltech/NASA

Signs of life on Mars? A few reasons for caution

Paul Byrne works at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. And this planetary scientist thinks we should be cautious in interpreting Percy’s new findings.

“Could this truly be a [signature of life]?” he asks. “Yes. And if it is, then it really is the kind of society-altering discovery that the discovery of truly extraterrestrial life would be.” But it’s also possible, he notes, that the spots came from something other than life. In that case, he notes, “All this is, is an interesting example of water-rock chemistry.”

The only way to find out for sure is to bring the rock home. A big part of Percy’s mission is to collect samples from interesting rocks for a future spacecraft to later bring home to Earth. Once here, they can be studied with better tools than a rover can carry on its back. For now, Stack Morgan says, Percy has thrown everything it has at this rock.

When might the rocks be brought to Earth? No one knows. Funding is currently on hold for a program known as Mars Sample Return, or MSR. “With this sample, the rationale for MSR is strengthened,” Byrne says. He hopes it will “motivate NASA to commit to … this project sooner rather than later.”

Stack Morgan says the rover team is carrying on despite MSR’s iffy budget.

“We have a mission to carry out and a job to do,” Stack Morgan says — collecting compelling samples. “It can only be our hope that the samples that we collect are compelling enough to justify the cost of Mars Sample Return.”

And she thinks Percy’s exciting new sample “really hits that home.”

Scientists Say: Magnetosphere

an illustration of planets beyond our solar system in a long curving continuous line

Here are 5 exoplanet mysteries the James Webb telescope could help solve

Active volcanoes may be common on Venus

An image of Pluto's Sputnik Planitia, a large basin likely formed from an impact billions of years ago.

Pluto’s heart may hide the rocky wreckage of an ancient impact

Actor Timothée Chalamet wears a brown cloak with a hood. He is walking toward the camera in a desert world with the sun shining behind him.

The desert planet in ‘Dune’ is pretty realistic, scientists say

An astronaut on Mars looks at a tablet device with the Red Planet landscape, base station and rover in the background

Here’s how to build an internet on Mars

a dark rock about the size of a tennis ball sits atop a piece of foil on an open palm

Let’s learn about meteorites

Huge polygons on Mars hint its equator may once have been frozen

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Elon Musk says human could reach Mars in 4 years after uncrewed SpaceX Starship trips

Humans could be headed to Mars in four years if the vision of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk becomes reality.

Musk took to his social media platform X on Saturday to announce his plans to send an uncrewed Starship to Mars in two years before astronauts head to the Red Planet two years after that. The SpaceX mega-rocket has already been undergoing a series of uncrewed tests to prepare it for its role in ferrying NASA astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon's surface as early as 2026.

But Musk has grander designs for Starship, the 400-foot behemoth that SpaceX officials say has improved in every demonstration they've conducted with the vehicle. His sights are set on Mars.

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years," Musk said in his post. "Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."

The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years. Flight rate will… https://t.co/ZuiM00dpe9 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2024

Starship's most recent test in June ended in success

The idea that humans could one day populate and even colonize Mars is one no longer confined to the realm of science fiction.

Astronauts are on the cusp in the years ahead of journeying all the way to the Red Planet , where so far only rovers and orbiters have dared to venture . And when they do, it's likely they'll make landfall aboard a SpaceX Starship.

SpaceX has been developing and testing the Starship, which is classified as a super heavy-lift launch vehicle and is lauded as the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.

In its fourth and most recent test in June, the Starship managed to once again make it to orbit before achieving a milestone: Splashing down for a successful landing in the Indian Ocean. The rocket's first three tests ended in explosions .

Though Musk has said he hopes for more Starship tests this year, he was evidently encouraged enough to proclaim the vehicle's imminent preparedness for a launch to Mars by 2026.

"These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars," Musk said on X, referring to the launches he says will happen in two years. "If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."

NASA to use Starship in Artemis mission

But before humanity makes it to Mars, NASA is hoping to send astronauts back to the moon .

NASA is paying SpaceX a hefty $2.9 billion sum with the expectation that Musk's company will be able to deliver on its promise of developing a spacecraft capable of safely transporting astronauts to the moon's surface.

NASA's ambitious Artemis campaign is the U.S. space agency's first lunar program since the Apollo era came to an end in the 1970s. When U.S. astronauts head back to the moon as early as 2026 , SpaceX's Starship would need to be able to transfer them from NASA's Orion capsule while in lunar orbit before heading down to the surface.

NASA is far from the only space agency with designs on the moon in the coming years: Agencies across the world view the moon as a valuable destination due to the resources it provides to aid further deep space exploration.

In the years ahead , NASA's Artemis program aims to establish a lunar settlement on the south pole. One day, the water ice could thought to be abundant in the region could be extracted and used for drinking, breathing and as a source of hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel to make crewed trips to Mars possible – such as the ones Musk is planning.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: SpaceX Starship could make uncrewed trip to Mars in 2 years, Musk says

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IMAGES

NASA's Human Path to Mars
Why should we go to Mars?
ESA
Why Go to Mars? The Pros and Cons of Travelling to the Red Planet
America's Long-Term Space Goal: Let's Put Humans on Mars
9 Reasons Why We Should Go To Mars!

VIDEO

Why should humans be scear of solar storms?
Why Do We Want Go To Mars And How Long Does It Take
The Future of Mars
Should Humans Go To Mars? 🤔 #science #space #nature

COMMENTS

Humans to Mars
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. 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.
10 Reasons Why Humanity May Want To Colonize And Live On Mars
Table of Contents. #1 - The Search for Life off Earth. #2 - Understanding the Surface of Mars and Its Evolution. #3 - Testing Ground and Launch Pad for Future Human Space Exploration. #4 - Develop New Technologies. #5 - Encourage Space Tourism. #6 - Offer Space Mining Opportunities. #7 - Advancing Science in General.
ESA
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. Understanding whether life existed elsewhere in the Universe beyond Earth is a fundamental question of humankind. Mars is an excellent place to investigate this ...
Five reasons to explore Mars
Mars is a valuable place for exploration because it can be reached in 6 ½ months, is a major opportunity for scientific exploration, and has been mapped and studied for several decades. The ...
Why we explore Mars—and what decades of missions have revealed
Since the 1960s, humans have set out to discover what Mars can teach us about how planets grow and evolve, and whether it has ever hosted alien life. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the ...
Robert Zubrin on why we should go to Mars
There are really three reasons: for the science, for the challenge, and for the future. As far as the science is concerned, Mars is the planet that is the closest to us that could have supported ...
Mars Exploration Future Plan 2023
The Mars Exploration Program is a science-driven program that seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be, a habitable world. NASA is reimagining the future of Mars exploration, driving new scientific discoveries, and preparing for humans on Mars. The Future of Mars Plan 2023-2043.
Human mission to Mars
The lowest energy transfer to Mars is a Hohmann transfer orbit, which would involve a roughly 9-month travel time from Earth to Mars, about 500 days (16 mo) [citation needed] ... In the 1980s, it was suggested that aerobraking at Mars could reduce the mass required for a human Mars mission lifting off from Earth by as much as half. [16]
ESA
The best possible opportunity for the emergence of life on Mars was in the first billion years after the planet formed, when it was much warmer and wetter than today - similar to those present on the young Earth. Therefore, there might be evidence of past life preserved underground. Sampling the subsurface down to 2 m to search for such ...
Missions: Mars
The engineering video below simulates the physics of Mars entry for Starship. For inquiries about our human spaceflight program, contact. SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
Buzz Aldrin on Why We Should Go to Mars
The Apollo 11 astronaut who walked on the moon dreams of a future where Americans are the first to walk on Mars. A member of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, Buzz Aldrin was the second man to walk ...
6 Technologies NASA is Advancing to Send Humans to Mars
6. Laser communications to send more information home. Human missions to Mars may use lasers to stay in touch with Earth. A laser communications system at Mars could send large amounts of real-time information and data, including high-definition images and video feeds.
Why Should We Go to Mars?
The biggest thinkers from around the world answer the question: "Why Should Humanity Go to Mars?" Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe Watch all clips...
Mars exploration: Why are we so fascinated with the red planet?
CNN —. The mystique of Mars is one that humans can't seem to resist. The red planet has easily captured our interest for centuries, heavily featured in science fiction books and films and the ...
The Ethics of Sending Humans to Mars
The Ethics of Sending Humans to Mars. We need to avoid the mistakes European countries made during the age of colonization. With Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson recently completing their pioneering ...
Space experts say sending humans to Mars worth the risk
Astronaut Scott Kelly recently completed a nearly yearlong visit to the station intended to reveal the effects of long-duration space travel on the human body (SN Online: 2/29/2016).
NASA Hopes To Land Humans On Mars By 2030. Is That A Good Thing?
April 30, 2021, file image taken by the Mars Perseverance rover. The Mars Ingenuity helicopter, right, flies over the surface of the planet. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS via AP, File) AP hide caption
The Space Review: Why should humans go to Mars?
Why should humans go to Mars? Many reasons for and against have been cited over the years, and many still struggle to see the relevance of this priority. It seems so far out, so detached from life on Earth, and in many ways it is. Mars is physically hundreds of millions of kilometers away. It is colder than the coldest environment on Earth and ...
Why Should We Ever Send Humans to Mars?
For some people the idea of having humans on the ground provides the paramount reason for space exploration. In that context, the history of our efforts to study Mars appears as a 60-year prelude ...
NASA's Journey to Mars
NASA. Dec 01, 2014. Image Article. 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. NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 ...
5 Undeniable Reasons Humans Should Go to Mars
But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before. 4. Growing as a species. Flickr / Paul Hudson. Another reason we should go to ...
Is colonizing Mars even a good idea? You can't breathe, after all
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. - Elton John might have said it best in his iconic song "Rocket Man" - "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids." More than 50 years after we sent humans to the ...
The Danger of Going to Mars
The Danger of Going to Mars. On a Mission. Season 1 Oct 29, 2018. Listen Now! [:05] Narrator: Come with me on a mission to outer space. Our destination is the planet Mars. We have to travel over 300 million miles. That may seem like a long trip, but we'll be speeding through space at 13,000 miles an hour. (intro music montage)
'Percy', NASA's rover, finds its first hint of ancient life on Mars
"We're not able to say that this is a sign of life," says Katie Stack Morgan. "But this is the most compelling sample we've found yet." Morgan is the deputy project scientist in charge of the Mars rover. She works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. Nicknamed Percy, the rover turned up this potential sign of life in ...
Elon Musk says human could reach Mars in 4 years after uncrewed SpaceX
Humans could be headed to Mars in four years if the vision of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk becomes reality.. Musk took to his social media platform X on Saturday to announce his plans to send an uncrewed Starship to Mars in two years before astronauts head to the Red Planet two years after that. The SpaceX mega-rocket has already been undergoing a series of uncrewed tests to prepare it for its role in ...