A mission to Mars might seem only plausible on the big screen, but plans for the eventual journey are in the works.
It might be another decade before human beings touch down on our neighbouring planet, but Canada is investing in research that could get things off the ground.
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“It could be early, it could be as late as 2030. It’s an open question because a lot of people are trying to move the needle forward to make it happen, so I don’t know when the departure date will be,” said Dr. Neal Pollock, an associate professor at Laval University and the chair of hyperbaric and diving medicine at the Hotel-Dieu in Lévis.
However, before humans are sent on what could be a two- to three-year journey to the Red Planet, the Canadian Space Agency is first embarking a team of researchers on another mission.
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Pollock is also a researcher with Thales Canada, a company that is creating a database to guide astronauts on how to treat medical conditions during their time in space.
“If you have someone on Mars, for example, you could have a time delay for one-way travel, a minimum of four minutes, but it could be 22 minutes,” Pollock explained.
That means astronauts could be waiting up to 44 minutes for a single communication with earth.
That’s why scientists are gathering information for as many as 100 medical conditions and helping to compile lists of supplies that will be needed in case of a medical emergency.
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“You would be able to bounce a lot more when you step, but you still have enough gravity that you could come down from one of those steps and break a leg, twist and ankle,” Dr. Pollock said.
So why not send a doctor as part of the team of astronauts?
“Oh, there probably will be a medical doctor, but what if the doctor is afflicted?” Pollock said. “Even physicians don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge in their heads for all emergencies, all conditions.”
Dr. Pollock, who has decades of experience working on research for NASA, said there is still no way to know what impact prolonged weightlessness will have on the human body.
“We have no clear understanding of what that time is going to do to people,” he said.