Should We Send Astronauts to Mars?

Did you know a robot named Perseverance landed on Mars last year? It’s a rover, or a type of robot with wheels. NASA has sent four other rovers to the Red Planet since 1997. Perseverance has been exploring the planet and collecting samples of rocks. NASA hopes the first astronauts to visit Mars will bring those samples back to Earth to be studied.

Most experts agree that we’ll be able to send humans to Mars one day. But not all of them think we should.

Just getting to Mars would be difficult. The trip would take at least six months. The air on the desolate planet is unsafe to breathe, and temperatures average an icy cold -81 degrees Fahrenheit.

Should we try to send humans to Mars, Earth’s closest neighbor? 

Astronauts have landed on the moon, and they live on the International Space Station (ISS). Many people think sending astronauts to Mars should be the next adventure.

Jim Rice is a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. He says the rovers have been very helpful in studying Mars. But he argues that two astronauts could’ve done the same amount of work in only a month!

“People are better explorers,” Rice says. “Robots depend on humans to tell them what to do.” 

Living on Mars won’t be easy. But NASA has technologies that can help astronauts survive. For example, the ISS can make oxygen for astronauts to breathe.

Many people think sending astronauts to Mars is too dangerous. The farthest humans have traveled is to the moon. Mars can be more than 100 times farther from Earth.

Astronauts couldn’t get deliveries of food, as they do on the ISS. There would be no rescue if anything were to go wrong. 

Plus, astronauts would have to worry about deadly radiation from the sun. On Earth, the thick atmosphere protects us from the harmful rays—but not on Mars. 

Many agree that humans might be better explorers than robots. But rovers might deal with Mars’s harsh environment better. 

“A robot doesn’t care about radiation,” says researcher Anders Sandberg.