Mars has been a source of curiosity for decades, with no timeline set for when humans might reach the red planet.
But astronomer David Whitehouse is hopeful that day may only be a few decades away.
Whitehouse predicted that humans will travel to Mars in the 2040s, with his prediction assuming that upcoming lunar explorations would be a success.
He said he believes this will lead to a better understanding of how we can survive the one-year journey to Mars.
Astronomer David Whitehouse predicts that humans will travel to Mars in the next 15 to 20 years
NASA planned to launch its lunar lander Odysseus in the early morning hours on Wednesday to search the dark side of the moon, but was postponed until Thursday due to anomalous methane temperatures.
Astronomers believe that the southern part of the moon contains billions of gallons of ice, which is a valuable resource for space travel because with ice, astronauts will have oxygen to breathe and water to drink.
“So going to the moon is valuable in itself,” Whitehouse said Sky Newsand added, “But there is ice on Mars, so what you learn on the moon you can take with you 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 predicted it will take at least 15 to 20 years before astronauts can travel to Mars, putting the expedition date in the 2040s.
The length of time to travel to Mars is a major problem, according to Whitehouse, because astronomers “don’t know how to stay alive during such a long journey in deep space.”
Historically, space travel 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 journey in space would affect the human body.
Scientists have been looking for signs of life on Mars since NASA’s Mariner 9 mission in 1962
There are three major problems with traveling in space for a year or more: weightlessness, radiation and confinement.
Living in zero gravity means that the muscles don’t have to work as they would on Earth, causing them to weaken and deteriorate over time.
It also causes the heart and lungs to weaken, meaning they cannot effectively pump oxygen around 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 room at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow to determine the psychological effects of such long confinement.
By the end of the study, the majority of 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 face radiation levels equivalent to one year’s exposure on Earth in just one week.
The only way to protect astronauts from radiation exposure during a long-duration mission to Mars would be to build a bulkier spacecraft or use more efficient shielding materials, both of which would make launches more expensive and difficult.
To put it into perspective, it typically costs a billion dollars per interplanetary space mission, meaning major space agencies around the world have collectively spent $50 billion on Mars since the first NASA 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 indicated it was once a lake bottom
Astronomers want to reach Mars because it is one of the few other planets in our solar system where life may have existed.
The Mars rover found evidence that Mars’ Jezero crater is home to an ancient river delta, but scientists recently confirmed that the crater was also once a lakebed.
The distance to travel to Mars is between 33 and 400 million kilometers from Earth, with the distance constantly changing, but NASA says it is working on six technologies to get humans to Mars by the end of the next decade.
Advanced propulsion systems, inflatable landing gear for heavier spacecraft and high-tech spacesuits that are adaptable to all climates and have improved mobility.
It also creates a home and laboratory on wheels that can navigate terrain, allowing astronauts to conduct experiments and allowing astronauts to survive on another planet, and surface power systems 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 transmit more data at once.
NASA said it plans to test all technologies on the moon before sending humans to Mars and hopes more information about the red planet “will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future and help answer whether life exists there.” exists outside our home planet.”