Scientists received data from the surface of Mars for the first time 50 years ago this week. NASA’s Viking 1 mission achieved the first successful soft-landing on another planet on July 20th, 1976. Mission planners managed to set the spacecraft on the martian surface seven years to the day after Apollo 11 achieved the first crewed landing on the Moon.
Astro-biologist David Grinspoon of the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute believes humans will eventually follow Viking’s path.
“It’s probably the easiest place to imagine humans going to live on the surface of any other planet in the solar system," he said. "Not that it would be easy. It would make Antarctica seem like a balmy picnic.”
Grinspoon earned a doctorate in planetary science from the University of Arizona. He envisions astronauts may travel to Mars to establish science stations similar to the ones set up at the South Pole, but actual human colonization of the Red Planet may be much further down the road.
"I think it's going to be much harder for people to go and live on Mars than is being promoted. It's a very harsh environment. Not that it can't be done, but it's easy for people to underestimate how hard and difficult and dangerous it's going to be."
On the other hand, Grinspoon believes it's in human nature to expand technology for exploration and habitation of other lands, or in the case of Mars, other planets.
