Mars One moves closer to launching humans to Mars

Are humans headed to Mars?

Science Recorder | Rick Docksai | Tuesday, December 31, 2013

 

As 2013 draws to a close, the founders of Mars One will be making at least one New Year’s resolution: make even more progress toward the goal of flying humans to Mars. It’s been less than eight months since the Dutch nonprofit went public with its plan to send several humans on a one-way voyage to the red planet by 2024, but the venture has made some noteworthy headway in that short time frame.

First, the venture has secured the buy-in of several respected industry partners. Aerospace heavyweight Lockheed Martin has agreed to build a Mars Lander vessel for the future expedition; and satellite firm SSTL has signed on to build a communications satellite that will transmit communications to and from Earth and the Mars base. Lockheed Martin has been involved in nearly every one of NASA’s robotic missions to Mars, and it has a lead role in NASA’s research-and-development of technologies for a human expedition to Mars. The aerospace firm will be designing its Mars One lander based on the Phoenix, a robotic NASA lander that explored Mars back in 2008. If all goes according to plan, Lockheed Martin could have a Mars One lander prototype ready for launch into space by 2018.

This year has thrown up a few difficulties, however. Among these are the volunteer signups. Mars One seeks interested volunteers from the general public. Applications have been coming in, but at a lower number than the project had been expecting: It’s gotten 165,000 at the time of writing but had been hoping for one million. Also, the applicant pool is overwhelmingly male, whereas Mars One’s ideal pioneer group would be an even number of men and women so as to ensure enough procreation to get a new thriving human settlement on the red planet up and running.

Still, some may argue that this initial pool of 165,000 applicants is already arguably close to enough for a final crew. The initial pioneering expedition isn’t supposed to take more than a dozen finalists when it launches.

In addition, the finalizing of a crew selection won’t move until the next phase until 2015. That’s when large groups of applicants will be chosen to form into teams and compete in tests of mental and physical capability. Only those who outshine all fellow competitors on round after round of these tests will be approved to join the mission.

The years 2018 to 2023 will see several unmanned missions take off for Mars and lay out infrastructure for the base. When the humans arrive, an event that Mars One expects will happen in 2024, an operational base will be there waiting for them.

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