NASA's Challenges And Steps To Take In Achieving The Goal of Sending Human To Mars By 2030

Series of updates on possibilities of Mars exploration have been published like the Mars 2020 Rover Mission and lately as Pres. Obama excitedly announced his goal to send humans to Mars by 2030 on Oct. 11, Tuesday is also the goal of NASA as they are on their journey to the Red Planet.

"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time," wrote the President in an op-ed on CNN. "

This goal is followed by the challenging question "What will it take to go there?"

NASA's Challenges in Achieving the Goal

As press released on NASA that Mars is the next tangible frontier for human exploration, and it's an achievable goal. There are challenges to pioneering Mars, but we know they are solvable. We are well on our way to getting there, landing there, and living there.

The journey to Mars crosses three thresholds and NASA is managing these challenges by developing and demonstrating capabilities in incremental steps: Earth Reliant, the Proving Ground, and Earth Independent.

The Earth Reliant exploration with a timeline from now to 2024 is focused on the ISS operation, commercial development of low-Earth orbit and development of deep space systems, life support, and human health.

Next phase is the Proving Ground with a timeline of 2018 to 2030. This phase is about regular crewed missions and spacewalks in cislunar space that will test the capabilities we will need to live and work at Mars; Verifying deep space habitation and conduct a yearlong mission to validate readiness for Mars; Demonstrate integrated human and robotic operations by redirecting and sampling an asteroid boulder.

The final phase is the Earth Independent with a timeline from now to 2030s and beyond. Here science missions pave the way to Mars; Demonstrate entry, descent, and landing and in-situ resource use; Conduct robotic round-trip demonstration with sample return in the late 2020s  and to send humans to low-Mars orbit in the early 2030s.

8 Steps to Colonized the Red Planet

Live Science pointed out that either way, before astronauts start packing their spacesuits and intergalactic playlists, scientists have to sort out a few problems and lay down the 8 steps to colonized the red planet. These 8 steps are the need to 1) Build American technology to get astronauts to space. 2) Build bigger spacecraft that can carry multiple people, along with all the supplies for a three-year round-trip, including potential cargo items. 3) Build bigger rockets. 4) Stick the landing. After people enter Mars' orbit, they need to land on the Red Planet. 5) Figure out long-term habitation on a space station. 6) Avoid deadly cosmic radiation (solar flares and galactic cosmic radiation). 7) Get to the moon. 8) Build housing on Mars.

Great thing start from small beginnings like the goal of sending humans to Mars by 2030 seems so ambitious and great but let us remember where we are before the first man who stepped on the moon made a history.