When is the next milestone for space travel? Since the Apollo mission, there haven’t been any significant milestones that have rivaled the importance of reaching the Moon. However, humanity has now set its sights on the next leap for mankind: Mars, the red planet. Not only have NASA and SpaceX promoted going to Mars, but President Trump has also taken an interest in Mars. In President Trump’s second presidential inauguration speech, he stated, “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”. SpaceX also seems adamant about traveling to Mars as early as 2028. While it has been on the horizon, NASA has been planning to wait till the 2030s to attempt missions to Mars. How long would it take to go to Mars?
Going to Mars is vastly more complex than going to the Moon. For comparison, it takes about three days to go to the Moon but nine months to go to Mars. Additionally, we haven’t gone to the Moon since 1972. Before returning, we must overcome the hurdles of providing our astronauts with oxygen, water, food, and shelter, not to mention the amount of calculations that must be done to even land on the Moon. Traveling to the Moon is complex, and NASA has devoted many resources to landing on the Moon with the new Artemis III project. The Artemis III project plans to revisit the Moon and is projected to start in 2027. The Moon remains our first hurdle, while Mars is the more challenging second hurdle.
While traveling to the Moon can push focus away from traveling to Mars, NASA and other space companies plan to reuse technology for overall space exploration. For example, Axiom’s newly designed spacesuits are made for the Artemis III mission but are also intended to be used for Mars. Their flexibility, ability to endure harsh environments and low radiation exposure are necessary for the Red Planet. Furthermore, NASA has teamed up with SpaceX to create safe travel to the Moon. NASA is aiding SpaceX in developing its Human Landing System. They plan to use SpaceX’s own space shuttle, Starship, to complete the ending procedure of landing on the Moon. NASA will use their Orion Space shuttle to get near the Moon and Starship to land our astronauts on the Moon. Starship is also planned to be the space shuttle of choice for our trip to Mars, and more testing of it in real scenarios can aid its research.
However, traveling to Mars provides even more struggles. One of the biggest struggles is communicating with the mission. Our communication technology only travels at a certain speed, so sending a message to Mars would take 20 minutes. That means everything must be autonomous without any help from scientists back home. This is not even considering solar conjunction when the sun blocks any signals to Mars for two weeks. Solar conjunction happens every 26 months. If the trip takes the required time or extended research on the planet, astronauts must be fully autonomous without guidance. This would be a first for space travel and might present risks never accounted for.
The challenges of Mars continue to be researched and explored. For example, Mars’s thin atmosphere creates challenges for landing safely on Martian soil. NASA is currently inventing inflatable landing gear to cushion the fall, and it has recently been tested to work in Earth’s atmosphere. To live on Mars would also require the creation of necessities, such as food, water, oxygen, and electricity. All these essentials will be created on Mars, as they need autonomy to survive a 40-minute delay. Technology is trying to solve and answer each of these problems. For example, ECLSS is a series of systems that reuses 98% of water during space travel. Each issue must be researched separately and tested, which is possible but will take time.
Almost every imposition mentioned has either a team of researchers or a prototype already in place to fix the problem. But how long would it take to fine-tune each solution and combine them into one rocket? Four years seems generous for all this to happen. NASA’s original guess for the 2030s seems way more likely. Artemis III plans to launch in 2027, which will only give them one year to examine their data and launch another mission to Mars. Other technological struggles of landing on Mars and creating human necessities on the barren planet will prolong this endeavor. Whether we go to Mars earlier than predicted or not, going to Mars will extend humanity, curb our curiosity, and provide us with challenges for new technologies.
