By Kurtis Archer | 2026-04-03

Mars is seen as the next great frontier for crewed space exploration, with preliminary, uncrewed missions to the Red Planet driven by scientific ambition, geopolitical competition and commercial rivalry.

A crewed Mars landing is set to be one of humanity’s most challenging undertakings, due to the planet's distance from Earth, its harsh environment, and the limits of what the human body can endure.

Yet scientists have dreamed of visiting Mars for decades.

Since 1965, when NASA's Mariner 4 became the first craft to conduct a successful flyby of Mars, efforts to prepare for an eventual crewed touchdown have continued to gain momentum.

Active Mars missions seek to learn more about the planet, through robotic exploration and sample return, as well as studies of its climate and atmosphere.

NASA's Perseverance rover is currently collecting samples from the Martian surface as the first part of the Mars Sample Return mission, which is conducted in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).

China National Space Administration's Zhurong rover (Tianwen-1) completed a scientific survey of the planet's rocks and minerals in 2022, and another mission (Tianwen-3) is planned for a 2028 launch.

The ESA's ExoMars robotic exploration program is meanwhile searching for signs of past or present life on Mars, with the Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft analyzing the Martian atmosphere for biological and geological gases, among other tasks.

NASA will contribute to the ESA's Martian rover Rosalind Franklin, which is scheduled to launch in 2028 and aims to be the first on the planet capable of drilling up to two meters below the surface to search for extraterrestrial life.

And the United Arab Emirates recently extended its al-Amal (Hope) probe to study Martian weather cycles.

Private space companies with active Mars plans include SpaceX, which is developing the Starship spacecraft for both cargo and human transport to the Red Planet, with the stated goal of establishing a settlement there.

Other key players include Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, which is developing concepts for orbital communications and potentially human-rated Mars orbiters, and Astrobotic, developing imaging capabilities for potential Mars missions.

Redwire Space and Albedo Space Corporation are looking into modifying current technologies for Mars orbit.

Crewed missions to Mars

NASA aims to send a crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s or early 2040s, after establishing a sustainable human lunar presence through its Artemis program.

SpaceX is targeting crewed landings on Mars by the early 2030s, with a long-term goal of launching thousands of Starships to establish a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet.

But SpaceX in February announced it was putting its longstanding focus of sending humans to Mars on the backburner to prioritize establishing a settlement on the moon, AFP reported.

"SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said on X.

Difficulties in reaching Mars include the fact that "it is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months," he said.

China officially plans to launch its first crewed Mars mission in 2033, though unofficial estimates indicate this may not occur until 2050.

Early missions will focus on exploration and setting up initial base infrastructure.

Yet Mars’s hostile environment presents significant hurdles for human visitors, with challenges including exposure to cosmic and solar radiation and toxic dust.

The planet's thin atmosphere, comprised mostly of carbon dioxide, mean they will need pressurized suits and housing, while the planet's weaker gravity could lead to muscle atrophy and bone density loss over time, per NASA research.

Mars experiences wide and extreme temperature fluctuations. And it is very far away, with a one-way trip of around 300 million miles taking roughly up to nine months, with current chemical rocket technology.

Past perceptions of the planet

All these challenges have only served to fuel the imagination of scientists, past and present.

Among them German-American rocket engineer Wernher Von Braun, who summarized a potential trip to Mars in a paper he presented at the Second International Congress on Astronautics at London in 1951.

Von Braun envisioned a process in which a space platform would be used as a staging point between Earth and Mars, with men, fuel, supplies and equipment delivered there by supply rockets over the course of 950 separate trips.

According to American science writer Hal Goodwin's "The Real Book About Space Travel," first published in 1952, the most difficult part of the Von Braun project would be getting supplies to a proposed space platform.

"Spacemen on the satellite would use the materials to build 10 space ships," which would carry fuel, supplies or the crew onward to Mars, Goodwin wrote in the early 1950s.

These space ships might look like "a series of globes held together with a frame," he wrote, noting that "space ships don't need to be streamlined, because there is no air in space."

Von Braun's plan included three "landing craft," according to Goodwin, who described them as "streamlined ships with huge wings."

In a paper written for the Second International Astronautical Congress of 1951, Edmund V. Sawyer of the Pacific Rocket Society said "parachutes and shock-absorber landing gear should be added."

"Take-off from Earth would be in a beautiful streamlined rocket, but the rocket would shed first one step and then another -- and only a little portion of it would finally reach the space station."

"Then, instead of one great ship, a flight of awkward-looking vehicles would blast off -- with most of their pay load devoted to fuel."

Time will tell how accurate these Martian predictions prove to be.

Life on Mars?

Martian canals remained a mystery in the 1950s, when Goodwin's book was published. Many scientists at the time wondered if the canals were irrigation systems constructed by Martians.

The canals are now understood to be a scientific misinterpretation, a case of pareidolia in which humans using low-quality telescopes found patterns where none existed.

Most experts in the 1950s believed Mars had plant life – an idea firmly opposed by most experts today.

"Probably Mars was much like Earth millions of years ago," Goodwin muses. "It had a thicker atmosphere and more oxygen in the air. This would have meant a better climate as well as a better atmosphere for Earth-type people to breathe."

Goodwin notes that some space experts believe intelligent Martians may have moved their civilizations underground, coming to the planet’s surface only with special technology in their suits to provide oxygen and heat.

Other experts believed Martians adapted to the changing planet via evolution, or that the creatures developed naturally under Mars-specific conditions.

In 2026, signs of life on Mars look more like potential biosignatures than a race of subterranean creatures. But the Red Planet has only just begun to reveal its secrets, and there are many mysteries left to uncover.