Life on Mars may be much closer than we think.
While the issue of life on Mars is still up for debate, several prominent people are optimistic about the prospect.
One is Elon Musk, who has been widely reported by TheStreet’s Luc Olinga to be committed to getting people to the red planet through his technology company Space-X.
And now the head of NASA, Bill Nelson, says that people living on Mars is a great possibility.
Speaking at an Axios conference on Wednesday, Nelson discussed recent advances NASA has made, including the Artemis program, which will return humans to the moon.
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“We already tested the rocket and the spacecraft,” Nelson said. That was a 26 day mission last November and it passed all the tests. It was so good that we added additional tests during the course of the flight.
“And now we’re going to put a human crew on it. Check it out. It’ll be the first time we’ve gone back to the moon in half a century. And then about a year after that, we go into lunar polar elliptical orbit. And of the four, two will transfer to the SpaceX lander, land, be a six-day mission on the surface, and that will be the first woman and the next man to walk on the moon.”
That landing is scheduled for 2025. And while it will be a technological feat in itself, NASA isn’t just aiming for the moon. It goes even further.
People could be on Mars very soon
Nelson also mentioned that he expects people to be on Mars by 2040, and that the next Artemis missions are critical to “testing human support systems” in space.
Still, a lot needs to happen in the next 17 years. Nelson added that “space is hard” and we still need to find some critical solutions to the physical problems that tend to only arise in space.
“You also have to wait until you know it’s as safe as possible because you’re living on the edge every time we’re thrown into a very unforgiving atmosphere into a very hostile environment,” he said.
