Space agencies such as NASA believe that when the technology is ready, humans will move to Mars and begin colonising it. However, it is not only technological complications which humans encounter in their efforts to move to the Red Planet, some experts have warned. The major hurdles that humans will have to overcome will be psychological, experts have claimed.
This includes the prospect of crews not getting along, interplanetary “jetlag” and the idea of being crowded into a spaceship for six months on the journey to Mars and then living in a small dome once on the Red Planet.
Dr Federico Caprotti, of the University of Exeter, said: “The biggest hurdles to Mars settlement are not technical but psychological.
“Long-range missions raise psychological questions that current knowledge in space science cannot answer.
“For example, the International Space Station enables a quick return and therefore a sense of psychological closeness to the Earth.
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“Mars does not allow this, and that brings a risk of intense pressure.
“There is also the issue of interplanetary ‘jetlag’. The journey could take about 400 days – though experimental plasma engines could speed this up.
“The psychological effects of a journey that long, combined with the lack of real-time communications with Earth as signals take four to 24 minutes could be huge.”
Each day, the prospect of living on Mars gains traction, with the likes of China, NASA and private space firms such as SpaceX striving to get there.
NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin said that a Mars colonisation is achievable by 2040, while tech billionaire Elon Musk is more ambitious and says that he hopes to get people to the Red Planet by the 2030s.
Last year, the SpaceX CEO said that can be accomplished in about 10 years, “maybe sooner, maybe nine years”.