Elon Musk isn't going to stop tweeting about how humans can migrate from Earth to Mars. For a long time, Elon Musk has spoken about his intentions to send humans to Mars, and it appears that his plans aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has always been outspoken about his efforts to send humans to Mars and set a deadline for it.
NASA Perseverance Rover used Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image of Santa Cruz, a hill within Jerezo Crater, on April 29, 2021.
Elon Musk, who had previously discussed "colonizing Mars," revealed that he intends to establish his own rules on the red planet in November of last year.
He moved his Mars agenda even farther with two tweets late Thursday. Science Times previously reported that Musk wanted to make humankind a multiplanet species. The other tweet wanted more than science support; he also required public support.
Public support for life on Mars is critical to making it happen
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2021
Many experts, on the other hand, caution that deep-space exploration poses so many unanswered questions. From overcoming cosmic rays and dust storms to producing oxygen and water, here are some of the toughest challenges:
Too Distant
The Apollo astronauts were able to travel to the moon in a matter of days, but a journey to Mars would take six to nine months. Because of their elliptical orbits, the distance between Mars and Earth varies between 35 million miles and 249 million miles. There is only a narrow window open where the two are perfectly aligned for space flight. This complicates logistics considerably.
Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide and a member of the Space Industry Association of Australia's advisory council, said there's still the possibility of rescue, provisioning, or delivery from Earth or a midway space station with lunar exploration. "That's not going to be the case for Mars," she told Bloomberg.
Solar Flares As Killers
A long flight will subject people to one of the most dangerous aspects of space travel: solar flares. NASA said flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system, equal to 100 million hydrogen bombs. The Earth's magnetic field will protect astronauts in orbit, but a deep-space traveler exposed to such radiation will only have a few days to live.
Lewis Dartnell, a professor and specialist in astrobiology in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Westminster in London, said in the same Bloomberg article that it's "a very gruesome way" to die.
Dust Storms, Radiations
Radiation isn't just a problem on the way. Since Mars' atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's and it lacks a global magnetic shield, Space.com said humans on the planet's surface will be vulnerable to solar and cosmic radiation. Furthermore, the surface is dusty. Nilton Renno, an astrobiology professor at the University of Michigan, said major storms will produce dust clouds that blot out the Sun.
Renno explained that it's like midnight on the surface of Mars for two months during such a storm. "If you are there with solar panels for power, you very likely don't survive. You don't have enough energy to keep things warm enough," Renno said in the same Bloomberg report.
Food, Water, Oxygen
According to Modern Farmer, Matt Damon's stranded astronaut in the 2015 Hollywood blockbuster "The Martian" grew potatoes by fertilizing the planet's soil with his own feces. Bloomberg said Associate professor Elisabeth Hausrath of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has more ambitious agricultural aspirations. NASA has been funding her research into growing snow algae, a type found in the Nevada desert and other high-altitude, low-nutrient ecosystems on Earth, in Mars-like conditions for the past year and a half.
Scientists must still figure out if humans would be able to provide enough water to live on Mars. There is some subsurface ice on Mars that may be water reservoirs. A potential Mars mission will need to chart its distribution using radar.
Going Home
Humans going to Mars will need to ride a spaceship back to Earth until anyone signs up for a one-way flight. The largest technical challenge for would-be Mars explorers, Michalski told Bloomberg, is figuring out how to get fuel to propel the spaceship back into orbit.
Optimists hope that scientists will solve these issues sooner or later.
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