Merdeka.com – Exploring outer space is the dream of many scientists and astronomers in the world. So far, the red planet Mars is one of the many planets in our solar system that has always been a target for exploration.
But if not Mars, how long will it take humans to explore other planets? Is it possible for us to explore worlds outside the solar system? All of those answers depend on which planet one goes to.
Serkan Saydam, deputy director of the Australian Center for Aerospace Engineering Research, says we may be able to colonize Mars in the next few decades. “I believe that by 2050 we will have a human colony on Mars,” Saydam was quoted as saying Live ScienceThursday (6/4).
Contrary to Saydam’s optimism, Louis Friedman, an astronautical engineer, argues that Mars colonization is unlikely in the future. But China has been preparing to send humans to Mars by 2033, while NASA aims to send astronauts there in the late 2030s or early 2040s.
So far, Mars is still the idol as a target for colonized planets. However, actually this red planet is not the most accommodating planet for humans. The Martian atmosphere is more than 95% carbon dioxide, and it is very cold with an average temperature of about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius).
Far from Earth or Mars, of course there must be other planets that are more hospitable to make a home that can be found outside our solar system, which are called exoplanets. The problem is, the location of the exoplanet is very far from human reach.
But Frédéric Marin, a black hole astrophysicist at the University of Strasbourg, France, gives a prediction of the travel time to reach an exoplanet, “The nearest exoplanet or exoplanet will take several tens of thousands of years to reach with our current technology,” he says, although it sounds very improbable.
But Marin hopes to cut even shorter times thanks to the faster spacecraft. “In science, the speed of the propulsion device increases by a factor of 10 in every century,” says Marin.
In other words, as humans learn how to travel faster in space in every century. The travel time to an exoplanet can drop from tens of thousands of years to thousands of years, and then to hundreds of years.
Marin predicts that humans will be able to reach an exoplanet that is at least hospitable to our kind within the next 500 years.
Intern reporter: Safira Tiur Margaretha
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