NASA is planning to land astronauts on Mars by the mid-2030s. The agency reportedly wants to take astronauts to the red planet for exploration by 2035 under the Artemis Program. The Program builds on the legacy of the Apollo missions which saw 12 men walk on the Moon.
Missions under Artemis will serve as a test bed to prepare NASA for journeys to Mars. The program began with the uncrewed launch of Artemis 1 on November 16, 2021 and lasted 25 days.
NASA also wants to land astronauts on the Moon for the first time since 1972 during Artemis 3 which will launch no earlier than September 2026.
But the agency is already looking to humanity’s next stop – Mars. According to the plan chalked out by the agency, the astronauts flying to the red planet will travel 402 million kilometres over the course of six to seven months one way. Besides, the astronauts might spend up to 500 days on the Martian surface before they return.
Mars is believed to have formed about 4.6 billion years ago, making it as old as the solar system. Scientists say it was very Earth-like, as it had liquid water and a denser atmosphere roughly 3.8 billion years ago. But the modern-day Mars no longer resembles its past self as there are no traces of liquid water (although polar region have ice deposits) and the atmosphere is just 1 percent the volume of Earth. The atmosphere mostly comprises carbon dioxide, about 95 percent.
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NASA has a Human Exploration of Mars Science Analysis Group which has been assigned the job to frame questions that the astronauts will attempt to find answers to. One of the major ones is finding signs of life, past or present on Mars.
Scientists are hopeful that they might just find something as water is considered an essential point of origin for life. They have found evidence that water once flowed on Mars and that there were vast oceans churning on the planet. The Perseverance rover, is exploring the Jezero crater, an ancient river delta.
Joel S. Levine, wrote in a report, that another key question that has been proposed by the analysis group is investigating the environmental changes that led Mars to lose its water and atmosphere.
The nearest crewed mission NASA is working toward is Artemis 2 targeted for launch in September 2025. Four astronauts – Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen – will make a trip around the Moon and return without landing on the Moon. The mission is intended only to test the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft with humans onboard.
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(Image: NASA)
