Mission Mars

Introduction

After the world war two Untied States and Soviet Union were the most two powerful countries. The cold war and competition for supremacy between these countries lasted for about half a century. Out of this cold war grew the space race. Space became the new arena and both countries wanted to show the superiority through space rockets and space flights the reason why mankind landed on the Moon. Project Apollo 11 was U.S.'s national goal set by then president John. f. Kennedy. The goal was to make landing on Moon and safely return back to Earth. The goal was accomplished and history of man landing on Moon was made. Since then the idea of border exploration and learning of other planets grew to the point that the current mission for some space agencies is the colonization of Mars; not only explore and study the planet but they also hope to make a possible settlement there. But why Mars? In this blog I will share with you what's so special about Mars? Why no one has landed on Mars yet? And what is National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) plan to make human landing on Mars possible?

What's So Special About Mars?

Mars is the only planet that we suspect that life existed on it at some point. Understanding if life ever existed beyond Earth is a question that mankind wants to explore. However this is not the only reason why we want to explore Mars. The other reason is catastrophic climate change and other significant threats to our planet will make Earth eventually inhabitable and humans will extinct. Mars by far is the closest livable planet that we know. 

What we know today is that at one point Mars had rivers, lakes, and an ocean which was at least a mile deep. It also had thick atmosphere. These characteristics make Mars very much like Earth. Today Mars is inhabitable. It doesn't has any surface water and has a thin atmosphere. Many scientists want to know what happened on Mars and can this happen to Earth in the future. To understand these complicated questions we have to go to Mars ourselves because these complicated questions can't be understood through robots. All the information about Mars that we have gathered are through robots and machines. The climate history of Mars is in the frozen water of Mars. Robots have to be programmed. We can program a robot on how to gather information but it will have its limitations and simply because a robot is man made machine it doesn't has the same intelligence as a human being.

Why No One Has Landed On Mars Yet?

The reason why we were able to go to Moon but have not been able to go to Mars is because of its distance from the Earth. The distance between the Earth and Mars is 1,000 times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. We can develop the necessary technology that can take a human being to the Mars but that would be very expensive. 

NASA which is a U.S's well known space organization gets its funding from the U.S's government. Different politicians have different opinions when approving funding to space missions. Some U.S. Presidents approved significant funding for NASA but when their term was over and next president was elected they reduced the funding significantly. This pattern of getting significant funding from the government and then significant reduction in funding has been going on for decades which is the reason why NASA has not landed a man on Mars yet. NASA has made partnership with private companies such as the well known SpaceX that can help with necessary funding to accomplish the mission of human landing on Mars but there is a good possibility that NASA might not be the one to make history of being the first one to land a human on Mars.

What Is NASA's Plan To Make The Human Landing On Mars Possible?

NASA has developed the plan how is it going to accomplish the mission to land a human on Mars. The first phase of the plan is to establish living on Moon first. Even though Moon is not ideal planet to live but if we can find out a way to make it work then it will be a lot easier to go to Mars from Moon than going directly to Mars from the Earth. NASA's strategy for the mission Mars is to send robots to Mars from the Moon to study the Mars more. After gathering all the information NASA can establish a colony on Mars before sending an astronaut there and already have all the necessary things that an astronaut would need including a way to safely return back to Earth. In the second phase of the plan, NASA hopes to send astronauts directly from the Earth.