NASA Inspiration Mars Manned Mission: Make-or-Break Time

An artist's illustration of the Inspiration Mars Foundation's spacecraft for a 2018 mission to Mars by a two-person crew. The private Mars mission would be a flyby trip around the Red Planet.

CREDIT: Inspiration Mars Foundation

Progress made during the next year or so will determine whether a private manned Mars mission can get off the ground in 2018 as planned, its organizers say.

Taber MacCallum

The pressure is on the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, which intends to launch two astronauts on a flyby mission around the Red Planet in January 2018.

If the team misses this window, the next one won't open until 2031, when Earth and Mars are again suitably aligned for a fast roundtrip trek.

"We acknowledge the reach that this represents," Taber MacCallum, Inspiration Mars' chief technology officer, said of getting everything organized in less than five years.

"The next year of effort on this is really going to tell, I think, whether or not we are able to close this as a mission."

Space tourist Dennis Tito proposes a Mars flyby mission with a trajectory shown here. 

CREDIT: Inspiration Mars Foundation