Humans will face intense psychological issues on Mars: experts

Living on a spaceship for six months would be one of the issues many might face.

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As the human race is planning to colonize Mars, experts might be skeptic about sending people to the Red Planet. They believe that it wouldn't be as easy as it has been projected in recent years.

 
Humans will face intense psychological issues on Mars: experts

NASA believes that when the technology is ready, humans will be able to move to Mars and begin colonizing it. However, some experts believe that it wouldn't be only technological constraints which humans will encounter once they move to Mars. The biggest issues that the humans will come across on the Red Planet would be psychological, claims the experts.

 

These issues could include interplanetary 'jetlag' and the idea of being on a spaceship for several months on the journey and then living in a small dome after reaching Mars.

"The biggest hurdles to Mars settlement are not technical but psychological," said Dr. Federico Caprotti, from the University of Exeter.

"Long-range missions raise psychological questions that current knowledge in space science cannot answer. For example, the International Space Station enables a quick return and therefore a sense of psychological closeness to the Earth. Mars does not allow this, and that brings a risk of intense pressure." she added

"There is also the issue of interplanetary 'jetlag'. The journey could take about 400 days - though experimental plasma engines could speed this up. The psychological effects of a journey that long, combined with the lack of real-time communications with Earth as signals take four to 24 minutes could be huge," Caprotti said.

With space agencies like NASA, and private space firms like SpaceX poised to set up a colony on Mars, the prospect of living on the Red Planet is only going to go uphill. NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin said that a Mars colonization is achievable by 2040, while Elon Musk believes it can be achieved by 2030s.

Besides, Elon Musk also shared the first pics of the "test hopper" prototype that is under development in Texas. The spacecraft is said to ferry up to 100 human beings to Mars. He added that more details about the spacecraft will be revealed early next year following a test flight of the prototype.

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