First Red Planet to Become Martians: Canada's Astronaut

Ottawa (AFP) – Astronauts traveling in space on their long journey to Mars will not have the usual backup of mission control on Earth and will have to consider themselves Martians to survive, the most famous Canadian astronaut said Friday. .

According to current forecasts, humans will reach Mars – up to 400 million kilometers (250 million kilometers) from Earth – over the next few decades.

But the long distance means that communications with the control of the mission would be delayed by 22 minutes.

As a result, astronauts will have to be self-sufficient on the trip, which makes a return trip of only two and a half years.

"If I were commander of the crew as soon as the Earth would have gone out in the rearview mirror, I would assemble the team and say:" We are no longer earthlings, we are now Martians. That's what we are. We need to redefine our relationship with the planet that gave us birth, "said former astronaut Chris Hadfield.

"It will be very difficult not to have Mother Earth next to you and it will be very important for this team to define who they are the most distant explorers of human history," he said.

Hadfield, whose thousands watched David Bowie's "Space Oddity" aboard the International Space Station in 2013, participated with fellow astronauts in a fireside chat with university students. d & # 39; Ottawa.

Robert Thirsk – who holds the Canadian record for the most time spent in space – said that new recruits from the Canadian Space Agency Joshua Kutryk and Jenni Sidey-Gibbons "will go to a deep space, return to the moon , to an asteroid, and in 20 years we will be on the surface of Mars exploration. "

In the short term, "the idea of ​​living on the moon … becomes very, very real," Kutryk said.

The Canadian astronaut was present during the last tests of the Orion interplanetary probe, in the southwestern United States, because he had declared that he would "bring humans back to the moon in the next few years."

In the coming months, Canada will launch three satellites, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will visit the ISS and NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to study an asteroid will carry Canadian sensors.