Would you go to Mars? What if the catch was you could never come back?
Thousands of people are competing to do just that, and become the first humans to travel to Mars and colonise it.
You may have heard of Mars One, a not-for-profit foundation aiming to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars.
The search for astronauts began in April 2013, with Mars One selecting and training the human crew. Recently, they have announced the final 100 candidates, which were chosen from a pool of 200,000 applicants. These finalists will be put through further testing, to pick the 24 who will make up six crews of four.
The journey itself will take around seven months, with Mars One hoping to launch each crew of four to the Red Planet every two years starting in 2024.
Mars One’s first unmanned mission is planned for 2018. However, Mars, the planet, has been a difficult target for exploration with only around half of all unmanned missions succeeding. And while the Dutch not-for-profit organisation hopes to use existing technology to carry out the mission, a recent MIT study found that should the first explorers succeed in landing, they would likely only survive 68 days given current technology.
Watch the video to meet the Mars 100 and find out more at Mars One.
What do you think? Would you be interested in travelling to Mars, even if you knew you would die there?
