Scientists Have Put an End to Human Flights to Mars

Russian scientists concerned: human body may not withstand Mars expedition

The President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Gennady Krasnikov expressed serious concerns about the possibility of manned flights to Mars in an interview with TASS.

"Of course, manned space exploration has a future. The Americans, and we with our Chinese partners, have programs for building lunar bases. Now Elon Musk is promoting a program for accelerated Mars exploration. This is a more serious task because it is much farther away than the Moon. Essentially [to Mars] it's 250 days of flight at the second cosmic velocity. And the factors affecting [health] there are much more serious. There are heavy charged particles, and we don't know well how they affect the human body. And this flight [to Mars] still raises questions for us about whether the human body can withstand heavy charged particles in open space," said Krasnikov.