How long does it take to get to Mars?

ELON Musk has his sights set on ferrying one million people to Mars by 2050.

The SpaceX CEO even has plans for humans to live in glass domes on the planet but many people are still questioning how long it would take to get there and is Mars even suitable for life?

How long does it take to get to Mars?

There is an immense distance between Earth and Mars, which means any trip to the red planet will take a very long time.

It’s made more complicated by the fact the distance is constantly changing as the two planets rotate around the sun.

The closest the Earth and Mars would ever be is a distance of 33.9million miles – that’s 9,800 times the distance between London and New York.

That’s really rare though: the more useful distance is the average, which is 140million miles.

Getty Images – Getty

Scientists on Earth have already launched a whole bunch of spacecraft to (or near) Mars, so we have a rough idea of how long it takes with current technology.

Historically, the trip has taken anywhere from 128 to 333 days – admittedly a huge length of time for humans to be on board a cramped spacecraft.

Has anyone visited Mars?

No human has ever set foot on Mars.

The Soviets first started sending unmanned space probes to Mars in the 1960s.

The first successful space probe to orbit Mars was Nasa’s Mariner 4.

This happened in 1965. Soviet probes landed on the Red Planet’s surface in 1971.

Since then numerous spacecraft have been sent to explore Mars but we’ll have to wait a bit longer until a person is sent.

This year the UAE, China and the US all have probe missions occurring at the Red Plane08 

Nasa once revealed the aim of putting a person on Mars by 2037.

What is the possibility of life on Mars

Currently, no hard evidence of past or present life on Mars has ever been found.

This doesn’t mean that scientists aren’t looking though.

There’s evidence to suggest that the dry planet once had surface water and maybe habitable conditions.

However, just because a planet has habitable conditions doesn’t automatically mean there was or is life there.

Is Mars suitable for life?

Space X

Humans might have to live in domes if they colonised the planet[/caption]

Mars is the second most habitable planet in our Solar System, after Earth of course.

It’s not extremely hot or cold and it’s thought to have enough gravity for the human body to be able to adapt.

However, there’s no free oxygen in the atmosphere so humans wouldn’t be able to breathe unless they had their own oxygen supply.

Humans would also need to wear a pressure suit.

The soil is toxic, water is scarce and you’d need protection from radiation and the cold.

Any life we have on Earth would have to be in some form of protective bubble if it wanted to survive on Mars.

Some scientists think we could change the planets atmosphere so it was more habitable.

What year will humans go to Mars?

We don’t know for sure what year humans will land on Mars.

Nasa has its sights set on putting a man and the first woman on the Moon in 2024.

After this mission, the Red Planet will be on the agenda and we could see a human on Mars sometime in the 2030s according to current estimates.

Elon Musk has previously expressed that he’d like to send a human crew to Mars within the next decade.

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