Mars has been a source of curiosity for decades, with no set deadline for when humans could reach the red planet.
But astronomer David Whitehouse has high hopes that that day is just a couple of decades away.
Whitehouse projected that humans will travel to Mars in the 2040s, and his prediction is betting that upcoming lunar explorations will be a success.
He said he believes it will lead to a better understanding of how to survive the year-long journey to Mars.
Astronomer David Whitehouse projects that humans will travel to Mars in the next 15 or 20 years
NASA planned to launch its Odysseus lunar lander to search for the dark side of the Moon in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but it was postponed until Thursday due to abnormal methane temperatures.
Astronomers believe that the southern region of the Moon contains billions of gallons of ice, which is a valuable resource for space travel because with the ice, astronauts will have oxygen to breathe and water to drink.
“So going to the moon has value in itself,” Whitehouse said. News from heavenHe adds: “But there is ice on Mars, so what you learn on the Moon, you can take it and use that technology on Mars.”
«The problem is that the Moon is three days away and getting there is relatively easy. Mars, the journey is the great frontier, because it will take almost a year to get there.’
He projected that it will be at least 15 to 20 years before astronauts can travel to Mars, putting the date of the expedition in the 2040s.
The length of the trip to Mars is a big concern, Whitehouse said, because astronomers “don’t know how to stay alive in deep space on such a long trip.”
Historically, space travel has only lasted a few days at most, with the average stay on the Space Station lasting about six months, but there is still little information about how a year-long trip in space would affect the human body.
Scientists have been searching for signs of life on Mars since NASA’s Mariner 9 mission in 1962.
There are three main problems with traveling to space for a year or more: zero gravity, radiation and confinement.
Living in zero gravity means your muscles don’t need to work like they would on Earth, which weakens and deteriorates them over time.
It also causes the heart and lungs to weaken, meaning they can’t effectively pump oxygen throughout the body, and bone density drops by more than one percent per month, putting astronauts at risk of osteoporosis. .
In 2010, NASA conducted the mars500 experiment where six men spent 520 days in a windowless chamber at the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow to determine the psychological effects of spending so much time in confinement.
At the end of the study, most crew members suffered from insomnia and other sleep disorders.
On Earth, humans are protected from radiation by the atmosphere and magnetic field, but in space, astronauts encounter radiation levels equivalent to a year’s exposure on Earth in just one week.
The only way to protect astronauts from radiation exposure on a long mission to Mars would be to build a bulkier spacecraft or use more efficient shielding materials, which would make launches more expensive and difficult.
To put it in perspective, it typically costs $1 billion per interplanetary space mission, meaning that major space agencies around the world have collectively spent $50 billion on Mars since NASA’s first spacecraft reached Mars in 1964, and this is just the cost of sending cameras, rovers and landers to the red planet.
The Mars rover identified a crater on the red planet that showed signs it was once a lake bed
Astronomers intend to reach Mars because it is one of the only planets in our solar system where life may have existed.
The Mars rover found evidence that Jezero Crater on Mars is home to an ancient river delta, but scientists recently confirmed that the crater was also once a lake bed.
The distance to travel to Mars is between 33 and 249 million miles from Earth, and the distance is constantly changing, but NASA says it is working on six technologies to put humans on Mars by the end of the next decade.
Advanced propulsion systems, inflatable landing gears to carry heavier spacecraft, and high-tech spacesuits that adapt to all climates and have improved mobility.
It is also creating a home and laboratory on wheels that can navigate terrain for astronauts to conduct experiments and allow them to survive on another planet, and power systems on the surface that will continue to function regardless of location or weather.
Currently, there is no way to have direct lines of communication with astronauts traveling beyond the Moon, so NASA’s laser communications system will allow astronauts to stay in touch with people on Earth and send more data to the time.
NASA said it plans to test all technologies on the Moon before sending humans to Mars and hopes that learning more about the red planet “will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future and may help answer whether life exists beyond it.” of our planet of origin”.