"Houston we have a problem."

Red lights flash on our shuttle console as we fly into the atmosphere, our mission to the International Space Station is now compromised. By communicating with mission control, we determine a simply defective sensor. We eliminate the anomaly, let out a sigh of relief and accelerate.

Once we land, it's time for a walk in space to complete a small structure. I get out of the probe and put on my spacesuit for the first time. If this order seems like a horrible idea, it's – if I was really in space.

Instead, I'm at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for Space Camp, which allows kids and adults to do what it would be to go on a space mission.

I imagine floating while I attach to the Five Degrees of Freedom Chair, which hovers half an inch off the ground and simulates microgravity. My task of screwing poles into round steel stakes should not be so difficult, but I wear gloves, the chair tilts easily and the little morons are delicate. I'm sweating but the job is done, even if I forget to close the hatch with the extra poles and some floating to become space debris. Oops.

I go back in the shuttle which, technically, left without us. In fact, we are already halfway to the house. I take off my helmet as we begin our last run. We enter a sharp angle and bounce off the track, but we survive despite our commander having forgotten to close the rear hatch.

"The Eagle has landed," our pilot says.

Get away from home like never before

Ask a group of kids what they want to be when they grow up and no doubt at least one will say: astronaut.

At this age, it is alien to think about the dangers inherent in spaceflight and the rigorous training necessary to take off. And to say that you need the "right material" to enter the ranks of NASA astronauts is a euphemism: only a tiny fraction of a fraction of 1% of those who apply is accepted.

With a human mission on Mars possible in the coming decades, the challenges of training will only intensify, as we prepare astronauts for a journey that will allow humanity to travel for the first time 34 million kilometers from home.

"It's very different to be on the moon and to be able to come back in three days," said Mae Jemison, a former NASA astronaut and first black woman to travel in space. "It's a completely different match."

I did not have the chance to live in a very confined space with an outside environment that would instantly kill me without a spacesuit. This is what astronauts are already facing at the International Space Station, but the time it takes to make a one-way trip to Mars (from nine to eleven months, roughly) will increase exponentially the psychological challenges and the way we train. people for them.

"With Mars, you really have to have your stuff together because it's a three-year trip," said Leland Melvin, a former NASA astronaut.

"I do not know if you need to put someone in a bat cave for three years or not to simulate that, but a long-term exposure to work with a very small group of people is a way to do it, "he said. .

"You can not train for every eventuality," Jemison said. It will therefore be about choosing the right people to adapt to the challenges of the red planet, so called because of its reddish appearance visible to the naked eye here on Earth.

"With Mars, we will rely a lot more on the skills people bring," said Jemison.

"This is not necessarily something in which you will be able to train people in two weeks and say," Hey, now you are trained in resilience. " They will have to find ways to test and see this before, "she said.

And the training will not only concern astronauts – but also the family and friends they leave behind, said Lowell Zoller, former NASA project manager and docent emeritus at the US Space and Rocket Center.

"If you go to Mars or if something goes wrong, you can not just say," Let's go back and go back. "It's not a matter of returning home," he said. did he declare. "We are going to have to condition families and people here on Earth as much as astronauts, because it is the first time we send people far enough so that they can not see at home."

So, why even go to Mars with all the costs, the risks and the time required to complete a single trip? According to Stephen Petranek, author of "How shall we live on Mars," on which the National Geographic "MARS" series is based, if we adopt a very long-term vision, we simply have to do it.The television series is both semi-documentary and scripted back and forth between Earth today – it shows how we are currently preparing to go to Mars and will discuss the issues that will develop in the future. once we get there – and a future where humans live and eventually industrialize the planet.

"Humans are a nomadic species moving from earth to earth for 95% of their life," he said. "Our DNA contains a survival mechanism that says you must move on to the next horizon and to the next wilderness."

Eventually, the sun will heat up and expand, consuming all life on Earth and possibly throwing the planet out of its orbit, said Petranek. Mars will suffer the same fate, but traveling on the red planet will be the ideal starting point to allow human beings to travel even further.

"We can not live on Earth forever," he said. "We must become an interplanetary species."

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