In 1971 – a satellite probe reached Mars. NASA’S Marine 9 was the first vessel to orbit another planet, and it took over 7000 photos of Mars’ surface, allowing us to examine it, for the first time, in unprecedented detail. Cut to 40 years later, and last week the world looked on as NASA’s Perseverance Rover triumphantly touched down, sending back video and audio that gives us – even if just for a few seconds – a clear idea of what it would actually be like to walk on the red planet. We’ve come so far in the last four decades that it’s hard to imagine where we will be in four more. Will walking on Mars be a reality? Will there be, in the words of David Bowie,  life on Mars? 

According to some people, yes – and it could happen much sooner than 2061. NASA chief Jim Bridenstine claims we could put the first humans on Mars by 2035. SpaceX founder and funder of XPRIZE Carbon Removal, Elon Musk, is even more optimistic: he believes that we can launch humans towards Mars by 2026, and have humans living there by the 2060s. In Stephen Petranek’s - TED Talk the writer and technologist is similarly hopeful, telling the audience that he can “guarantee that some of your children will end up living there.” We need to focus on taking much better care of Earth, Petranek urges – a message that can’t be expressed strongly enough – but he adds that it’s good to have a plan B, especially when an asteroid could, technically, wipe Earth out any minute. Yet, this isn’t just a matter of preventing our extinction, he says, it presents an exciting possibility for our growth, too: “Some of the greatest advances in civilization and technology came because we explored,” he reminds us. 

Colonizing Mars might sound like a great idea when you put it like this, however there still stands some grand challenges before we get there: a harsh environment, a lack of oxygen, and a few *small* issues with radiation. Not to mention months-long storms. Mars is not for the faint-hearted... But is it for you? Read our travel guide to Mars below to find out… 

The journey 

Mars is 1000 times further away than the moon, so it’s going to take a while to get there… 240 days, roughly, and that’s if you head off on a very specific day that comes around once every two years when the travel time between the two planets is at its shortest. Better book the time off work now. 

Is it worth the journey? We’re thinking yes. You’ll get to see Earth from a new perspective on your way out, and if you witnessed the Mars Close Approach on October 6 2020, when Mars and Earth were at their nearest points in their orbits around the sun, you’ll have a small idea of what it’s like to see the red planet with your own eyes. In close up, it’s bound to give you goosebumps, just like this video of Perseverance Rover’s recent landing, courtesy of NASA: 

The landscape 

Once you arrive on Mars, the view is going to blow you away even more (well, if the low gravity doesn’t, but more on that in a moment). The surface of Mars is red, the soil appearing like rusty iron since the ground material regolith contains a large amount of iron oxide (scientists say the iron must have oxidized back when there was flowing water and a thicker atmosphere). 

Adding to this unusual beauty, the landscape of Mars is full of hundreds of thousands of impact craters, which stick around because of the low erosion rate and lack of lava sources. There are lakes too – although unfortunately these mostly sit under the surface of the planet – researchers announced in 2020 that they believe there to be three large salty ice lakes that we can’t see. 

More research will tell us more about life below the surface of Mars, and NASA’s Perseverance Rover isn’t the only vessel to recently initiate an information-gathering mission. Tianwen-1 became the first-ever Chinese spacecraft to reach Mars this February, and the orbiter is now gathering information on the planet with radar equipment, with the rover to be dispatched to explore its surface in May or June. The United Arab Emirates’ vessel, Hope, also reached Mars earlier this month, and will gather new imagery of the planet. 

The peace and quiet… kind of 

Think of standing in the Arizona desert alone, and you’re beginning to get an idea what it might be like to stand on the surface of Mars. If you’re a solitary person, this could be just the place for you. There won’t be many people on Mars. At least, not until Coachella decides to stage a festival there. As for the peace and quiet, Perseverance recently captured the first audio recording from Mars. You can listen to the gentle hum of the breeze on NASA’s website. 

Low gravity 

Mars has a lot less gravity than earth due to its smaller mass, meaning that you won’t just be able to walk around objects but maybe drift over them too. Who isn’t excited about the novelty of that? As XPRIZE Founder Peter Diamandis points out, the novelty of zero gravity might have worn off during your journey. You’ll have already been in a zero-gravity environment for eight months, which is sort of like being in bed for eight months, as Peter puts it. Low gravity decreases muscle mass and even affects eyesight, too, so we’ll need to come up with a solution to this challenge. But when we do, we’ll have all kinds of fun floating around. 

The fresh air… maybe

Mars might be the most liveable other planet in our solar system, but one of the grand challenges of moving there is the lack of oxygen. The atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth’s and the air is 96% carbon dioxide. But a grand challenge is, of course, met with innovation, which is why experts have come up with a machine called MOXIE – Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. 

Perseverance has carried MOXIE with it to Mars so that it can be tested in situ for the first time. Appearing like a little gold box, the device pulls air out of the thin Martian atmosphere (a lot of it, since it’s so thin) and converts the carbon dioxide into oxygen. “The device is essentially the reverse of a fuel cell, which burns a mix of oxygen and a carbon-based compound to produce heat and carbon dioxide,” explains Space.com, comparing the machine’s conversion rate to a medium tree (only with a much more complicated chemical mode of extraction). First, a larger scale MOXIE will need to produce enough breathable air to fill up the oxygen tanks needed to power rockets, so astronauts can fly home from Mars. Then, the focus will be on creating oxygen to sustain a visiting crew. The problem right now is, it uses up a large amount energy. 

So, by the time we move to Mars, we’ll have had to work out how to run MOXIEs on a big scale, efficiently. The good news is that we can potentially harness this innovation to help us take better care of Earth. There is a long history of government-funded technology that now ubiquitously helps civilians, from GPS to the internet, as well as a long history of space tech being used here, from freeze-dried food to memory foam. Alternatively, if we can figure out how to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen more efficiently here on Earth (something we’re working on with XPRIZE Carbon Removal), maybe we can take that innovation with us to Mars. 

The climate

The climate on Mars is something more of an acquired taste. If you are the type of person who is into the Wim Hof method, then Mars is probably for you. While the red planet can reach warmths of 70 degrees Fahrenheit on the equator during the “Summer” (seasons and years are twice as long), the lows are savage – minus 81 degrees Fahrenheit is the average temperature, compared to Earth’s 57 degrees. Sounds bracing. 

We advise you to dress well. Perseverance has carried with it test samples of materials – ortho-fabric, which is made of Nomex, Gore-Tex, and Kevlar, as well as Vectran, Teflon and polycarbonate – that NASA designers are planning to use as part of their Mars space suits, in order to test how well they fare. 

The architecture 

Colonizing Mars has been described as, at its core, a “design” challenge. Not only will we have to create the spaceships that take us there, and the protective suits we wear when we get there, but we will have to build liveable shelters. The blueprints for what these could look like are beautiful. Some involve natural elements, like using regolith to build walls that could protect settlements from the harsh elements. Others use technology – in 2015, NASA ran a challenge calling for designs for 3D printed shelters for Mars – the results ranged from what looks like a space age helter skelter, to a red modular dome structure with a room for growing plants. Conditions likely dictate that, whatever we end up with, these sealed habitats will look very different to what we have on Earth. 

So, when are we going...? 

Until we can make the atmosphere more breathable, it looks like our trip to Mars might be on hold. Right now, we’re at the planning stages of terraforming Mars – that is, the long-term goal of making Mars more habitable, like Earth. Experts believe that we can – hypothetically – use engineering to warm up the atmosphere of Mars, creating enough of a temperature rise to melt the ice, thicken the atmosphere, and achieve more protection from radiation – making the planet a viable option. It’s a slow process, but one that’s already in motion – so whether it’s 2035, 2061, or beyond, one day not so far away, we really could be moving to Mars.