NASA details groundbreaking plans for humans to live and work on Mars as soon as the 2030s
NASA have detailed extensive and groundbreaking plans to explore and eventually colonize Mars, which would allow humans to live and work on the red planet's surface.
Sitting anywhere between 33 and 249 million miles away from Earth, Mars is seemingly the next big thing when it comes to space exploration for NASA and other key private space agencies like SpaceX.
Despite increased efforts to continue exploration of the Moon, including mining missions which could earn certain companies eye-watering sums of money, Mars is of particular interest as no human has ever landed or stepped foot on the planet.
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NASA has previously sent five separate robot 'Rovers' to the surface of Mars in order to study it's surface, and these continue to inform the agency's understanding of the planet and it's viability for humans in the future.
"Mars remains our horizon goal for human exploration because it is one of the only other places we know where life may have existed in the solar system," explains NASA's dedicated 'Humans to Mars' landing page.
It continues to outline that "engineers and scientists around the country are working to develop the technologies astronauts will use to one day live and work on Mars and safely return home to Earth."
While the fact it's been over 50 years since any astronaut set foot on the Moon might lead you to believe that any trip to Mars would be an age away, it's actually much earlier than you likely expect.
NASA have estimated that "as early as the 2030s" is an accurate time frame for when humans will begin to conduct exploration missions on Mars, and they're already running complex simulations of the planet's surface in order to prepare as best they can.
Known as the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or 'CHAPEA' for short, this test places a four-person volunteer crew inside a surface simulation for 378 days, which should determine how to best support the health and performance of the crew once they eventually make it to Mars.
It certainly won't be a quick journey though due to the nature of reaching another planet that's beyond Earth in orbit. NASA predicts that not only will it take around 279 days to reach Mars from Earth, the round trip will reach roughly one billion miles in total.
Comparatively, the recent return of stranded astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station took just 17 hours - and Russian efforts have also reduced this to just three hours in the past - so that shows just how complex reaching Mars is compared to where we've already explored.