Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the SpaceX Enterprise. Its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no one has gone before…
Well, according to Elon Musk who wants us to become “a spacefaring and multiplanetary species, it looks like Mars will be our next destination and planned missions to send space vehicles to Mars will commence as soon as next year! The initial mission will not be manned, it will be a mission to test the technology required to land heavy equipment on the martian surface, which will prove to be difficult due to its thin atmosphere.
Elon states "we are building the first Mars, or interplanetary ship, and I think well be able to short trips, flights by first half of next year."
Once the space vehicles are up and running in Mars the next step will be to send a privately funded cargo mission by 2022.
Before packing your things, here are some Mars facts to think about:
Even though Mars is smaller that Earth, it has a similar landmass because 70% of earth is covered in water
The surface gravity of Mars is about 37% the gravity found on Earth. This means that on Mars you could in theory jump 3x higher than you could on Earth!
Mars experiences huge dust storms – the largest in our solar system.
It takes Mars 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun
Mars has seasons like Earth, but they last twice as long.
Temperatures on Mars never exceed 20° C
It would take approximately 260 days to travel to Mars
Can you breathe on Mars?
Well Mars does have an atmosphere, but it is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere and it has very little oxygen.The atmosphere on Mars is made up of mainly carbon dioxide. You would not be able to breathe the Martian air and would need a spacesuit with oxygen to survive.