Buzz Aldrin Working On Plans To Make Human Mars Colony A Reality By 2040
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has teamed up with the Florida Institute of Technology with the aim of establishing a human colony on Mars within 25 years.
The second man to walk on the moon’s ‘Cycling Pathways to Occupy Mars’ strategy sets out a plan whereby two ‘cycler’ spacecraft would travel between Earth and Mars perpetually, using the two moons of Mars as preliminary stopping points for astronauts.
The first landing on Mars would take place by 2025, though he admits that the timeline is ‘adjustable’.
The aim is to establish a colony before 2039 to mark the 70th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
NASA is already working on deep space exploration, with an asteroid landing planned for the 2020s and a Mars landing currently slated for the 2030s.
Aldrin attended a ceremony this week to celebrate the opening of the Florida university’s Buzz Aldrin Space Institute, which is set to officialy open its doors in the autumn.
Aldrin will join the faculty as Research Professor of Aeronautics and serve as an advisor.
The former astronaut completed a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1951 and was awarded a Doctor of Science degree in astronautics from MIT in 1963.
The 85-year-old flew on the Gemini 12 mission in 1966 before making history as the second man to walk on the lunar surface after Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11.
