Human beings have dreamt of landing on Mars for over a century. In the last months, politicians and scientists have begun to outline a possible timetable for sending the first manned trip to the fourth planet of the Solar System in terms of distance from the Sun. While U.S. President Barack Obama has announced in 2012 that he expects the first mission of this kind to reach the red planet during the thirties, new voices now advocate this date.
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| Buzz Aldrin, second man to ever walk on the Moon |
These include the american astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who landed on the Moon with Neil Armstrong aboard the Apollo XI. He now says that humans will reach Mars between 2035 and 2045. Aldrin also advocates that the year 2040 should be considered the deadline for the establishment of the first permanent settlement on Mars.
Manned missions to Mars began to be discussed in the fifties, and since then several space agencies have developed plans that address the establishment of bases on Mars as well as human's adaptation to its environmental conditions. Aldrin believes this will become the next "impossible dream” to come true, although the date on which humans could leave their first footprint on another planet for the first time still seems remote, mainly because of the very high radiation that astronauts would have to face, and the effects of long-term weightlessness.
“Going to Mars is becoming an increasingly possible goal to achieve. I believe we will succeed in the decade 2035-2045," Aldrin said today at the European Parliament in Brussels, during the conference "100 years starship", which is part of a series of scientific seminars called "EU Science. Global Challenges and Global collaboration".
"We're ready to send people beyond the Moon. Even during the period of economic difficulties we are experiencing, it is possible to achieve this goal" that Aldrin calls "the challenge of the century."
In the book "Mission to Mars", to be published in May by National Geographic, Aldrin has collected the key points humankind should address to meet that deadline.
According to the astronaut, setting foot on the red planet will require a large international investment and cooperation among countries, without letting any of them in front of the others. This is not the first time that Aldrin calls for a "unified leadership" to get to Mars. The astronaut is a strong advocate of a system of international cooperation for the promotion of the aerospacial sector which would work on a similar basis to the UN.
In addition, the mission will require a leader that drives the project with determination, as did U.S. President John F. Kennedy when he set as a goal reaching the Moon before the decade of the 70s. In that case, the United States "did not have the expertise, but had a leader with the level of commitment necessary to get us there. We must succeed or fail, and no one was interested in failure, " added Aldrin.
In his opinion, NASA should set 2040 as the deadline for a permanent human presence on Mars, an achievement that “will turn us into a two-planets species". A flow of manned missions would then be established between Earth and Mars, which reminds to that already proposed by the German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun in the fifties. The chief designer of the Saturn V rocket, which carried this group of men to the Moon, devised a plan to get to Mars with the participation of ten space ships weighing about 4,000 tons and a crew of 70 passengers.
Aldrin, the second man to ever walk on the Moon and therefore the star of some of the most iconic pictures of Earth's only satellite, also gave an overview of the most special times of the legendary Apollo XI mission. These memories are part of another of his books, "Magnificent desolation”, published in 2009.
“I loved the idea of being a space traveller and sometimes achieve the impossible... becoming part of a team of people united by a single goal," he recalled with a hint of nostalgia, remembering his work as a NASA mechanical engineer and pilot of the Apollo XI Lunar Module.
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| Buzz Aldrin, photographed by Neil Amstrong. |
Only twelve men have set foot on the Moon so far. Since President Obama cancelled in 2010 the budget for the Constellation program, meant to return to the Moon with a manned spacecraft, it seems that the focus has shifted to Mars and some asteroids.
Recently, billionaire and space tourist Dennis Tito announced a project to travel to Mars and come back to Earth with a duration of 501 days. He seemed confident that this would be the next milestone in space history. Tito, who became the first space tourist to visit the International Space Station in 2001, foresees that the project, dubbed "Mission America", would take place in 2018 -twelve years earlier than the one planned by Obama, and seventeen years before the one envisaged by Aldrin. Back in 2006, the British physicist Stephen Hawking said in a press conference in Hong Kong that a permanent base on the Moon could be established in twenty years time, while on Mars in forty years.
"It is important for humanity to expand into the Universe in order to ensure the survival of their own species. Life on Earth faces an increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other pitfalls that we have not thought of yet" said Hawking back then.
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