• Question: Can a human go and live in Mars in about...3 years? (2020)

    Asked by e'claires to Rosie on 14 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Rosie Cane

      Rosie Cane answered on 14 Jun 2017:

      Unfortunately it seems unlikely. So many missions to take people to Mars get planned, and then get delayed or cut because of funding problems.

      The main difficulty when planning a manned-mission to Mars is that sending a human is a lot more risky than just a robot and takes a lot of careful planning. That is why all the missions to Mars so far have used Mars Rovers and not people. It is actually easier and cheaper to send robots to Mars to do experiments so that is what we will continue to do until we are convinced that our plans to send humans to Mars are as safe as they can be!

      Both SpaceX and NASA are definitely hoping to send a mission in the next 10 years so maybe before too long humans will have set foot on another planet!

Comments