Student Contest Launches to Aid Private Manned Mission to Mars

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

A private manned Mars mission may get some help from students on its way to the launch pad in 2018.

A newly announced contest asks students to propose design concepts for the Inspiration Mars mission, a private effort that aims to launch two astronauts on a flyby of the Red Planet in January 2018.

"Inspiration Mars is looking for the most creative ideas from engineers all over the world," Dennis Tito, executive director of the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, said in a statement Friday (Aug. 16).

"Furthermore, we want to engage the explorers of tomorrow with a real and exciting mission, and demonstrate what a powerful force space exploration can be in inspiring young people to develop their talent," added Tito, a multimillionaire who in 2001 became the first space tourist when he paid his own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"This contest will accomplish both of those objectives."



The competition, which is organized by the nonprofit Mars Society, challenges teams of university students from around the world to design a two-person 2018 Mars flyby mission as cheaply and safely as possible.