Will people travel to Mars on vacation? According to Richard Branson, space travel might become common by the end of this century. Branson founded the Virgin Galactic space program to take people into space. You can make a reservation today for a future trip!
But traveling to Mars is more difficult. It is 35 million miles away! Franklin Chang Diaz, a former NASA scientist, is developing a rocket that will send a shuttle into space at the speed of 55 kilometers per second. The trip from the Earth to Mars will be reduced from 6 to 8 months to 33 days. NASA, the U.S. space agency, announced that someday people may even live on U.Mar. But before that happens, many questions will have to be answered
The most frequent question is, Are there, or were there ever, the right conditions for life on Mars? Water is important because where there is water on Earth, there is life. Mars is a dry and dusty planet. Its temperature is much colder than Earth's, at an average of-60 degrees Celsius. Mars's atmosphere is thinner than Earth's, and it is deadly to humans scientists believe that Mars once had a vast ocean. They are now looking for water with space probes. One mission in 2008 found ice on Mars, but not liquid water. NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012 equipped with sophisticated instruments. Its objective was to study samples of rocks, and find out if they contain organic molecules, which are signs of life
New technologies will enable scientists to explore Mars in new ways. And, who knows? Maybe in your lifetime, the first humans might step on Mars.