Several decades ago we were all excited about the moon and sending humans to the moon. Now, the Red planet, Mars has taken over the moon. Recently, the North American Space Agency planned it’s manned mission to Mars in near future during a meeting at Houston, Texas.
The American space agency plans on sending a 6 to 7 month long manned mission to Mars sometime in 2031. This was done in tandem with President Bush’s program of returning humans to the moon. The NASA folks present at the meeting talked about how they can achieve this goal.
The Mars space rig will weigh about 880,000 pounds. The Mars manned mission will cost NASA anything between $20bn to about $450bn. A chunk of the investment will go towards the newly developed Ares V rockets that NASA has built for the mission. I think that’s a huge investment on NASA’s part. Hopefully, they will make some cool discoveries during the 2031 mission.
The space agency is working on developing new ways to protect it’s astronauts from harms way. Although, there’s no telling when danger will strike them in space. The ’ship’ to Mars will be equipped with a ‘close loop’ life support system. The plan is to grow plants and feed the crew. Air and water will be recycled within the craft. However, many queries still remain and plenty of things need to be figured before NASA can promise it’s crew a safe journey to Mars and back.
