This was a high goal that American leaders have taken the detour for generations, and President Donald Trump launched his second term by restoring his objective of achieving the Red Planet.
“And we will continue our manifest destiny in the stars, launching American astronauts to plant stars and stripes on the planet Mars,” he said during his inauguration speech on January 20.
Elon Musk – The CEO of Space Technology Company Spacex – At the president’s ear this time, suggesting that we will see an even more difficult thrust to make the trip from 140 million miles to Mars.
“Can you imagine how great it will be to ask American astronauts to plant the flag on another planet for the first time?” Musk said the day of the inauguration.
It will take a Herculean effort from NASA to make a mission in Mars a reality, experts told ABC News. He must rely on the Artemis program – that Trump created in 2017 to build a human presence on the Moon – to bring people to set foot on Mars, according to NASA.
“The current approach of the Moon to exploration from the Moon to Mars calls for the use of missions on and around the Moon as part of the Artemis campaign to prepare for future human missions in Mars,” said a spokesperson for the agency in a statement sent to ABC News. “We are impatient to find out more about the Trump administration plans for our agency and develop exploration for the benefit of all, including the sending of American astronauts during the first human mission to the Red Planet.”
However, the mission cannot simply launch each time the teams and the technology are ready. Scott Hubbard directed the agency’s March program From 2000 to 2001Was director of his research center for 4 years and has been in the direction of NASA for 20 years.
He noted that there are specific windows to launch the mission. When the Earth and Mars align themselves in their orbits around the sun, the distance and the energy required for a spacecraft going to Mars is minimized.
The planet Mars is shown in this image of the Viking Orbit I Voyage in 1998.
USGS / JPL / NASA
The next window is only a year and a half.
“Even with the most powerful rockets we have, there is a 20-day window every 26 months,” he told ABC News. “And that’s it. I mean, it’s literally there or forget.”
Whenever the mission takes off, it will be an incredibly difficult endurance test filled with problems never encountered before, requiring a daring astronaut team enough to make the trip.
Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams have tasted it. The pair has been in space for nine months, their planned trip of 8 days at the International Space Station (ISS) obtaining an unexpected extension for security reasons.
“Thus, once we have passed not to return to our spacecraft, we went to a crew member, on the international crew, members of the international space station,” Wilmore told ABC News. “And that’s what we have been doing since we are here.”
Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, Sunita “Suni” Williams and Nick Hague, who are on the international space station, discuss the challenges of sending humans to Mars.
ABC News
Williams noted that this type of flexibility will be essential for all those who hope to go on Mars.
“I would say that nothing goes as planned and being ready for that,” she told ABC News. “You know, a little challenge, a little adversity brings out the best in us.”
This experience can one day be useful to astronauts who made the trip from 7 months to March, the member of the ISS team team, Nick Hague, told ABC News.
“You know, being here, it is not a singular mission. It is not a singular trip to Mars,” he said. “We are part of a long inheritance of exploration, human exploration, space, and we do our little part to try to move this.”
The crew of the ISS seeks some of the logistical challenges that the long journey to Mars would present.
“How do we support ourselves? We cannot pack all the resources we need during a trip to Mars and support a long mission,” said Hague. “We will therefore have to understand how to cultivate the food we are going to need.”
Astronauts should also be able to replace the equipment that breaks during the trip.
“So you can’t take each spare part with you,” said Wilmore. “You will have to have an additive manufacturing means – 3D printing.”
The trip would also expose astronauts to conditions that could lead to multiple health problems, including the potential risk of cancer and mental health problems, as well as bone and muscular problems, said spatial physiologist Rihana Bokhari in ABC News. Puting messages on earth could also take some time, she noted.
“This communication period will be quite large with regard to Mars, about 20 minutes in each direction as far as possible,” she said.
Putting your foot on the fourth planet of the sun can be the goal, but it is only half of the battle. A round-trip mission would take at least three years.
“In addition to transport, you need a habitat. We have not yet built space so that astronauts live during the 6 or 7 months that it would take to get there and have a really reliable life support,” said Hubbard, former NASA Mars official in ABC News.
In this screen of a video taken by Perseverance Rover from NASA, the ingenuity helicopter of the Mars agency was shown before taking off on March, April 19, 2021.
JPL / NASA
Hubbard thinks that NASA should think in the longer term for its first mission inhabited in Mars.
“Not all opportunities are equal,” he said. “And if you were to look in 2033, you see an opportunity that only appears once every 15 years. You can get the most mass in Mars from one of these other 20 -day windows.”
Given the duration of the window from now on, Hubbard noted that the Apollo missions followed a similar chronology – from the first tests in 1961 to Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969.
“And it will not only take technological progress, but a political will,” he said. “It will take people to see that it is part of what we do as human beings.”
