Shown here is an artist’s drawing for the Nasa Phoenix robot lander probe. Mars One is financing a scout probe based on this design to make an initial robotic survey trip, scheduled for 2018. Mars One was in the news today. Mars One achieved a major candidate selection milestone, narrowing down the candidates for their privately-funded one-way trip to Red Planet to 50 men and 50 women.
We’re continuing our recent theme of photo posts on Martian colonization. THis theme is coincidentally just in time for this news.
A one-way trip to a permanent space colony, with no possibility of return if something goes wrong, will greatly reduce the weight and complexity of the spacecraft. Mars One hopes it will shaves decades off the preparation time, albeit not without criticism for greatly increasing the risks to the explorers by eliminating the safety-net of a round trip.
(Mars is still risky business, as becomes clear from the number of probes that have been lost over the years.) As previously discussed in prior blog postings on Red Planet missions as well as the Singularity, some believe the trip necessary to mitigate increasing existential treats to Earth including, amongst many others, the need for space exploration to offset mineral and Rare Earth Element depletion.
A version of this article originally appeared as a photo post on our Instagram feed.