Travel to Mars and Never Come Back: Colonizing the Red Planet

The Mars One mission is a life time mission and the settlers will never come back to Earth
The Mars One mission is a life time mission and the settlers will never come back to Earth

The Mars One mission is a life time mission and the settlers will never come back to Earth

SF News – Mars colonists are registering with a Netherlands-based not-for-profit organization called Mars One to be among the first traveling to the red planet, Mars, in 2023.  The travelers will be populating the first manned station on the planet called also ‘Mars One.’

The organization announced its astronaut requirements on January 8 and is planning to televise its choosing process to global viewers.  That should be by the end of 2013.

Applicants can be anyone over the age of 18 and no scientific or space travel backgrounds are required.  “We are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others, in the long journey from Earth to Mars and for a lifetime of challenges ahead,” said Norbert Kraft, Mars One chief Medical director and former NASA researcher, to Space.Com.

On its website, Mars One introduces itself as the “not-for-profit organization that will take humanity to Mars in 2023.”

An outpost will be built on the red planet prior to the Mars One launch using robotic cargo missions planed for 2016 until 2021.  The first four astronauts will arrive in 2023 and more will keep coming every two years thereafter.

The Mars One mission is a life time mission and the settlers will never come back to Earth.  At least no return has been planned by Mars One for now.

The organization has already received over 1000 emails from interested individuals and hopes to be able to select the qualified individuals it is looking for by the end of the year.  Those selected will be employees of Mars One during training period on earth and throughout the mission itself where they will be stationed, on the Red Planet.