ARTICLE

Expedition to Mars

Scientists have always said that there may be life on Mars. They also said it may even be habitable to humans under the right conditions. Although they think Mars is the next step after the moon, they have never actually been to Mars, only the moon. Dive deeper into this topic and explore more by reading this article.

ISAIAH LOPEZ
4/12/2022

Mars is a very interesting planet. It is the second smallest planet in our solar system and it orbits around the sun in 687 Earth days. That's almost double an Earth year! Mars's orbit is not unusual. It follows a similar pattern to Earth, just taking longer.

It has two moons—Deimos and Phobos. It's surface is somewhat habitable, being a terrestrial planet and not so hot that we'd burn up as soon as we land there. In fact, Mars is actually cold, but not too cold. We don't have many other options for planetary space travel.

So, why haven't humans been to Mars yet? After all, we've landed several spacecraft on Mars before, so why has no one been on Mars yet?

"The first obstacle is just the sheer distance", says Michelle Rucker, lead of NASA’s Human Mars Architecture Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Since Earth and Mars are two differences from the sun and orbit at different times, they are different distances at different times of year and different years as a whole. There will be some points in time that the distance between Mars and Earth will be greater and time that the distance will be smaller. We only have a chance every 26-months, when Earth and Mars are closest.

That's not the only problem though. The way humans behave also plays a huge role in the delay of our trip to Mars. There will be no outside contact.

“If you are tired of the food you’re eating you can’t say ‘Let’s order a pizza,’” Rucker says.

Another difficulty would be the landing. Landing on Mars would be really hard because of the massive thrust. The aircraft would basically just crash and break when it "lands".

The equipment would also have to be very big—maybe from slightly smaller than the ISS (International Space Station) to significantly bigger.

Either way, scientists have been trying to find ways for humans to go to Mars, and even though there are so many obstacles, scientists can one day overcome them.

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