Have you ever dreamt about living on different planet? What about traveling to the Moon like in science fiction movies? NASA has its sights on the Moon and on the Red Planet as well, for the very same reason. To seek signs of habitable conditions and to search for signs of microbial life itself. 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 carry humans to the moon and beyond.
Elon Musk, CEO of private spaceflight company SpaceX is also getting into the Mars game. Musk believes that humanity must become a multiplanetary species in order to survive and he is working on a plan that could see a million people living on Mars before the end of this century.
Soon, humanity may finally know whether our neighbouring planet ever hosted life and whether there’s future for our species on another world. So far, Mars seems to be the most habitable planet in the Solar System after Earth. How long it takes to get to Mars depends for example on the technology or the Red Planet’s position. Once every two years, Mars and Earth reach their closest points, being as close as 55 million kilometres. Agencies tries to take advantage of this orbital alignment and send spacecrafts to Mars to seek potential life on Mars. Even though, many samples were collected already by scientists to help gather more knowledge about Mars, more time is needed to make this dream become reality. Maybe next generation will be part of future human expeditions to Mars and maybe it won’t be science fiction anymore.