NASA aims to put humans on Mars by 2030
The Red Planet has been a mystery to man for so long. Now that man has discovered the presence of ice and water on Mars, NASA is now making plans to send humans there by the year 2030.
Mars is the ideal planet for robotic and human exploration. It will help man better understand Earth as Mars' formation and that of Earth's is almost the same. Scientists have been saying that Mars showed signs of being suitable for life in its past. NASA hopes to uncover evidence of life on Mars to end the debate of whether there could have been life on other planets other than Earth.
NASA certainly thinks so and has launched an ambitious program to put humans on Mars. It will soon come to fruition. As outlined in the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and in the U.S. National Space Policy, also issued in 2010, NASA is going ahead in its plans to attempt to send humans to an asteroid by 2025. Once the agency is successful in doing that, it will then concentrate of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s.
To go to Mars, people will use an Orion spacecraft. This spacecraft will be launched via a Space Launch System Rocket. from NASA's Kennedy Space centre in Florida. To first test the Orion, an unmanned flight was sent out to space on Dec. 4, 2014.
Orion aims to act as a bridge between Earth and Mars. It will allow people to travel to and from both planets. It goal is to travel to deep space, pushing the boundaries of where man can go in space even further than before. The last spacecrafts to attempt this goal were the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s.
NASA's plan is to send humans to an asteroid first in the 2020s. From there, this asteroid will act as a gateway to the red planet. The asteroid will be placed in a stable orbit around the moon and from there, in the 2030s, NASA will attempt to bring people to Mars.