Kovalchuk called the mission to Mars today a "one-way flight"

The duration of the flight to Mars at the current level of technology development is 250 days, and at the moment such an expedition is a one-way trip. This was announced on February 26 by Mikhail Kovalchuk, President of the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center (NRC), during a speech at the IV Forum of Future Technologies.

"You see, it takes 250 days to fly to Mars in one direction. But imagine, with today's level of technology, you flew on the 50th day or the 250th and broke down. In any case, it's a one—way flight," he said.

At the same time, Kovalchuk drew attention to the fact that even in the case of a successful flight, it will be necessary to live on the planet, and "life is energy." He stressed that humanity has yet to master the skills of living in outer space. According to the scientist, this process should begin with the practical exploration of the Moon, where new power plants and promising life support systems will be tested.

"We need to explore the moon, and to explore the moon, we need energy. The first thing to do is we need energy, we need a power plant. There is no alternative to nuclear energy in space. So, we have a task of energy and life support," he added.

Space exploration: Russia to send representatives of three countries into orbit

These may be citizens of Indonesia, North Korea, Vietnam or the Central African Republic, experts believe.

The Wall Street Journal reported on February 6 that SpaceX decided to temporarily postpone sending a space mission to Mars in order to pay more attention to studying the Earth's satellite and implement the lunar program of the US space agency NASA. It is expected that the company will be able to conduct a mission to land on the Moon without human intervention as early as 2027.

On February 8, American entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk announced his intention to build cities on the Moon and Mars. In his opinion, a flight to Mars can only be carried out at the moment when the planets line up, which happens every 26 months. At the same time, one can supposedly fly to the moon every 10 days.

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