From “To Mars or Not?” by Ray Jayawardhana

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In the mid-1990s, NASA dedicated nearly half of its budget for planetary exploration to Mars alone. That is largely because Mars is a potential habitat for past—or future—life. Mars is also, in many ways, the next logical destination for human space travelers beyond our moon, which the Apollo astronauts visited between 1969 and 1972. Mars is only about half the size of Earth, with a very thin atmosphere dominated by toxic carbon dioxide gas, a frigid climate, and massive dust storms. Yet those conditions are preferable to the hellish temperatures, bone-crushing pressures, and acid rain on our other neighbor, Venus. This is why American and European space programs have turned their focus to Mars.

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In 2010, President Barack Obama announced a new direction for NASA, including a call to develop new rocket technologies to send humans beyond the moon. “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow, and I expect to be around to see it,” he declared in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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This new national space policy replaced President George W. Bush’s 2004 plan, which would have included a return to the moon by the year 2020. Some critics, including Neil Armstrong, the first person to step on the moon, disagreed with the change in direction. President Obama responded, “I just have to say pretty bluntly—we’ve been there [to the moon] before…. There’s a lot more space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do.”