Are We Ready for Mars?

What will it take to send astronauts to the Red Planet—and have them return safely?

If the future of humanity is to be among the stars, Mars represents our next giant leap. But sending people there will expose them to unknown and understudied risks to their safety and sanity. Overcoming their many physical dangers raises questions just as serious as rocket designs and landing sites. A mission to Mars will be the ultimate test of human endurance, stressing bodies, minds, and technologies in ways no human endeavor—on Earth or beyond—ever has. In Are We Ready for Mars? biomedical engineer and human spaceflight expert Mark Shelhamer takes readers inside this demanding and thrilling challenge.

A journey to Mars will take about a year, and once the rocket launches, there's no turning back until the mission is complete. Mars-bound astronauts will have to survive using only what they have on board (there will be no restock missions), and long communication delays mean they'll be almost entirely on their own. They'll face prolonged isolation, altered gravity, constant radiation exposure, and the strain of living in a closed, high-risk environment with little privacy. Human biology—from bones and muscles to vision and immunity—will react in unpredictable ways. Human psychology—from the ability to think clearly and cooperate to the capacity to stay cool under pressure—will have to adapt to inevitable setbacks and surprises. The crew will have to expect the unexpected and endure threats—from the social to the physiological—that grow as their time in space ticks on. Shelhamer looks beyond science fiction to the research and planning already underway, showing how medicine, engineering, mission operations, and artificial intelligence must work together to make human exploration possible.

Shelhamer argues that the traditional, siloed approaches to human health that got us to the moon and kept us aboard the low orbit International Space Station will not suffice. What Mars demands instead is an integrated approach, and deep resilience: a spaceship, crew, and systems crafted and trained to cope with whatever crises crop up. Are We Ready for Mars? offers a rare, realistic look at what it would truly take to have astronauts safely reach, and return from, the Red Planet—and how those efforts might transform the way we care for human health on Earth. Cover illustration by award-winning British artist Chris Malbon.

Mark Shelhamer is a pioneering human spaceflight researcher specializing in sensorimotor function and neurovestibular adaptations, with backgrounds in electrical and biomedical engineering. He is the director of the Johns Hopkins Human Spaceflight Laboratory, a professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the former Chief Scientist of the Human Research Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Shelhamer serves as the Vice President for the Human Research Program for Civilian Spaceflight and an advisor for the Organization for Space Medicine, Engineering, and Design. Brian Gallagher is a writer and editor who has commissioned award-winning stories which have been featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Writing on Mathematics. An editor at Ergo, and former editor at Nautilus, his journalism has also been recognized by The New Yorker and others. Gallagher is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and studied philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.