Footage of clouds rolling over Mars were released this week by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Is it possible that humans could be standing under similar red-and-green tinted clouds by 2029?
President Donald Trump hopes so. In his Jan. 20 inauguration address, Trump said the U.S. will “pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” indicating the goal will be reached by the end of his term.
NASA has had its sights set on the Red Planet for some time and for a number of reasons. Already, the space agency has sent robots to Mars, which send back footage such as the cloud images released this week.
“It is one of the only other places we know where life may have existed in the solar system,” NASA said. “What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet.”
However, getting there is a challenge. Mars is an estimated 33 million to 249 million miles from Earth – and NASA said that distance is always changing. As the fourth planet from the sun, it’s also described as “dry, rocky, bitter and cold,” with temperatures that can get down to minus 284 degrees.
With the Artemis campaign, NASA eventually hopes to develop human missions to Mars. Last February, Audacy reported that the space agency was even seeking out volunteer “Martians” to live in a simulation of what life might be like on Mars. The Artemis campaign is set to start with a human mission to the moon departing next year – the first since 1972.
“We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon,” said NASA of the campaign.
However, Space.com noted that Trump’s plans for Mars exploration will likely rely on his close ally Elon Musk. He is both the lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the CEO of SpaceX, the company that makes the spaceship that might bring humans to Mars for the first time – the Starship megarocket – and that has made other rockets used successfully in space missions.
“SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket – collectively referred to as Starship – represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” according to the company website.
Musk’s involvement might change up NASA’s plans, The Hill noted. For example, he doesn’t seem to be interested in another trip to the moon before sending humans to Mars.
“No, we’re going straight to Mars,” he said in a January post on X, the social media platform that he owns. “The Moon is a distraction. Mass to orbit is the key metric, thereafter mass to Mars surface. The former needs to be in the megaton to orbit per year range to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars.”
An interesting source – actor Mark Ruffalo, known for his portrayal of The Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – took to X this month to share that he thinks Mars is a big priority for Musk, who has recently made headlines for controversial moves he’s made with DOGE.
“The one thing Elon pressed upon me when I first met him was that he was going to go to Mars and set up a civilization there,” said Ruffalo. He indicated that Musk might be interested in diverting some government spending towards that project.
Space.com said that plans to speed up a human arrival on Mars have “raised many eyebrows,” and it noted that Starship is still in development. Per the outlet, the seventh Starship test mission last month was a “partial success” with the vehicle’s upper stage suffering an explosive failure following a propellant leak. The Hill said that “Mars is a stretch goal,” and though the Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, it hasn’t carried astronauts yet or landed on another planet.
Musk has said that SpaceX aims to launch the vehicle on uncrewed missions to Mars next year. If those are successful, he wants to send astronauts there in 2028.
As of this week, NASA said the proposed “Mars Sample Return” mission to bring Martian samples to Earth in the 2030s alone would be “NASA’s most ambitious, multi-mission campaign.”
In an interview with Space.com, said Volker Maiwald, an aerospace engineer from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), said that “a Mars mission will be the greatest undertaking that humans have ever done.” He has written about the feasibility of a crewed mission to Mars aboard the Starship and identified mass as the main problem.