NASA plans to send humans on a scientific round trip to Mars potentially as early as 2035. The trip will take about six to seven months each way and will cover up to 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) each way. The astronauts may spend as many as 500 days on the planet’s surface before returning to Earth.
NASA’s Artemis program plans to return humans to the Moon this decade to practice and prepare for a Mars mission as early as the 2030s. While NASA has several reasons for pursuing such an ambitious mission, the biggest is scientific exploration and discovery.
I’m an atmospheric scientist and former NASA researcher involved in establishing the scientific questions a Mars mission would investigate. There are many mysteries to investigate on the red planet, including why Mars looks the way it does today and whether it has ever hosted life, past or present.
