Nearly a quarter million people (202,586 to be precise) have applied for a one-way ticket to Mars, with candidates from the Middle East making serious headway in the race to become a modern-day Martian!
The flight won’t launch for another 11 years, but competition for those four first seats is fierce. (You have far better odds of being hit with lightning — estimated as a chance of one in 3,000 over your lifetime!)
Mars One is the inspired (or insane?) global initiative to establish a permanent human settlement on the red planet. An unmanned mission is scheduled to depart in 2020, with the first human crew starting its one-way journey in 2026. Subsequent crews will depart every 26 months, each with new research and development tasks. That’s a lot of people to pick, and the screening process is arduous.
The third selection round has concluded, narrowing the field to 100 hopefuls. “The large cut in candidates is an important step towards finding out who has the right stuff,” said Bas Lansdorp, co-founder and CEO of Mars One.
What further challenges will these candidates face? Remaining selection rounds will focus on creating teams that can endure all the hardships of a permanent Mars settlement — emphasis on “permanent.” They’ll be subjected to a battery of psychological and physical testing and trained in an earth-bound replica of the Mars Outpost.
Candidates who were not selected to continue will have a chance to reapply this year in a new application round. Meet ten would-be space pioneers from the Middle East!
