This article appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Discover as "Medicine for Mars." Support our science journalism by becoming a subscriber.
Science fiction writers have been dreaming of a crewed mission to Mars for over a century. But it wasn’t until Wernher von Braun published the English translation of his book, The Mars Project, in 1953 that the idea was plucked out of the realm of fiction and into reality.
