NASA has sent many a spacecraft to distant worlds, yet humans still haven’t set foot on Mars – here’s why.
Space exploration has come a long way since Galileo first developed a telescope to peer into the heavens in 1609.
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We have sent a man to the moon via Project Apollo 11, developed satellites that orbit the Earth, placed rovers on Mars, and even documented supernovas exploding.
Therefore, the question begs: Why hasn’t man stepped on Mars yet?
Clearly, scientists and engineers have developed the technology to do so – Nasa could have likely achieved this feat 30 years ago, according to a report by Business Insider.
It seems the lag can, in part, be attributed to politics, according to Zero Gravity Operations CEO Peter Diamandis.
Because Nasa is a government-funded agency, many of its initiatives are determined and outlined by the Executive Branch.
And since it was founded in 1958, the agency has worked with 12 presidential administrations, many of which clashed with one another when it came to space exploration goals.
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“So what’s happened throughout all of space history after the Apollo program was over was to start, stop, start, stop, cancel. President comes in like Bush comes in to go to the Moon, back to Mars and the next president comes in and cancels that,” Diamandis told Business Insider.
“The agency is unable to sustain consistent funding to do anything,” he added.
For example, President Bush in 2004 announced Nasa’s Constellation Program, which had two goals: Send a crewed mission back to the moon in 2020 and land humans on Mars in the 2030s.
However, when the Obama administration came along, the agency had to steer away from the Constellation Program to instead focus on Obama’s “Journey to Mars” project, which aimed to send humans to the Red Planet by the early 2030s.
President Trump’s admin shifted the agency’s focus once more when it announced its goal to “return American astronauts to the moon and from there to lay a foundation for a mission to Mars,” according to Vice President Mike Pence.
All of this shuffling around may have prevented the agency from focusing solely on a mission to Mars, which still requires tackling a number of concerns.
The first obstacle is just the distance between Mars and Earth, which is constantly changing as the two planets orbit the Sun at different paces, Michelle Rucker, lead of NASA’s Human Mars Architecture Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told Astronomy.
Therefore, an optimal period for traveling to and from the Red Planet doesn’t occur as often as scientists would like – as of right now, the “trains to Mars,” so to speak, leave once every 26 months, according to Jeffrey Sheehy, chief engineer of the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Other important concerns include understanding how the human body and mind will be affected by factors such as spending a long period of time in a small confined space, as well as exploring what adapting to life on another planet looks like.
Until Nasa addresses these very important concerns, Mars is likely on pause for cosmonauts.
“The scientists and engineers at NASA are amazing and they’ve done extraordinary things. But they’re risk aversion. That doesn’t allow us to do new and novel things that are on the edge,” Diamandis said.
“Doing anything big and bold in space is hard and it’s risky. So, it’s entrepreneurs taking the risks these days, willing to put everything on the line,” he added.
Diamandis is not wrong – with private companies like SpaceX and Boeing funding their own missions to the Red Planet, it’s not improbable that the first person who will walk on Mars could be either a billionaire or a very lucky civilian.
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In other news, the creators of a chilling new horror game say that the title is so disturbing they’ve been forced to censor it on PlayStation.
Apple has announced updates to AirTags following claims that the coin-sized tracking devices are being used to stalk people.
And TikTok has announced new rules, banning users who deadname or misgender others.
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