I must admit watching Matt Damian suffering on Mars as he waits for rescue in The Martian doesn’t give us much confidence about the future of space exploration, but like what former US President John F Kennedy said about the mission to the Moon: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
If not for the Americans and Russians working together to reach the moon in 1969, we would not even dare to dream about Mars our next Frontier.
National Geographic’s new docu-drama series “Mars” imagines the Mars mission in 2033 on board the rocket ship Daedalus and interjects it with interviews from Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and other scientists as they look at the challenges of bringing a human being to Mars. I was very excited as I saw footage from the series of a rocket returning to earth at Mach 3 speed and then engaging the reverse rocket to slow down and land. Even though the mission failed, it showed how close we are to building a reusable vehicle for the mission to Mars!
If you are free this weekend, do go down to Sentosa’s Palawan beach and get a bit of that excitement before the Docu-Drama is to be broadcasted on National Geographic Channel this Sunday. At this Mars exhibition, you can look at the Mars Aqua Retrieval System rover built by the Singapore University of Technology and Design, know about growing plants and living on Mars and experience low gravity walking at 20% of your weight on the surface of Mars! You can also print your own Mars Identity Card as a souvenir.
Mars premieres November 13, Sunday at 10pm on National Geographic Channel.
