The first person on Mars is someone probably living right now, a NASA expert said while discussing how humans will "absolutely" be making a life for themselves on the Red Planet in the future.
Though experts are faced with various obstacles they still need to overcome before Mars becomes a reality, NASA chief scientist Jim Green told USA Today he was confident that the campaign would be a success in the near future.
There's been a lot focus recently on getting humans to Mars, and what was once a foreign concept seems to becoming a reality, but a target date is still lacking and that was a subject of much disagreement at the recent Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, Bloomberg reported.
Mars is an attractive second option for the human race as it has more Earth-like qualities than any other planet in the solar system, and as research continues, experts are finding that "Mars is an even better location for having past life," Green told USA Today.
"It’s just getting better and better."
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted that he would be ready to send his private-venture space vehicle to Mars by 2022.
Because of SpaceX's determination to reach the Red Planet in the next four to six years, Russia is reported to be accelerating its plans to fly to Mars.
By 2040, scientists are hoping to send a human to the planet, though there are several factors that may impede that, Green said.
First, NASA would need to be able to land a 10-ton load on the planet's surface but at the moment the space agency is only able to park a 1-ton vehicle.
NASA also would need to figure out how to blast off from Mars because a trip to the planet is not a one-way ticket. Green told USA Today the space agency planned to make a return to Earth possible within the next decade.
And, the first people on Mars would have to also build an entire infrastructure and would need to farm and establish a food source to sustain life on the Red Planet.
"The people that would go there are real pioneers," Green said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.