Rendezvous with the Red Planet

The loss of the space shuttle Columbia has sparked wide debate over the future of manned spaceflight. Some say the manned program may wither unless NASA revives plans to land people on Mars. Is such a mission possible?

Why go to Mars?

Once we reached the nearby moon, Mars instantly became the next logical step in manned space exploration. It’s closer than all the other planets in the solar system except Venus, and it’s the only one with an environment our astronauts could tolerate. (Venus has a hellish surface, with a toxic atmosphere and temperatures soaring to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.) Mars has a wispy atmosphere, surface ice, and, some scientists think, maybe even microbial life. “It’s a tangible frontier,” says Orlando Figueroa, who oversees NASA’s Mars exploration programs. “We know we can get to it.”

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