Somewhere out there, the first Mars explorer is getting ready. I often wonder who it will be. A young woman from the U.S.? A man from Africa or Europe? A member of a multi-national team that spent years living and training on Earth and then the Moon?

The state of Mars exploration today is largely dependent on orbiters and landers. This is as it should be. These workhorse robots are doing the advance work for future generations of human explorers. Due to the work that the Mars rovers are doing, for example, future Mars geologists (areologists?) will know what to look for when they study the rugged terrain and now-familiar rocks on the surface of the planet. The mappers will have given us the most detailed surface maps, suitable for charting out the course of human exploration of the Red Planet. Even the Hubble Space Telescope comes in for some Mars exploration, charting long-term changes of the planet as seen from Earth orbit.

Eventually, however, humans will figure out the mechanisms for getting to Mars, exploring it, and living there for long periods of time. That will be, as a friend of mine at NASA once said, “time to quit messing around and actually DOING the heavy work of Mars exploration.” (Well, he didn’t say “messing around” but you get the idea. He IS a supporter of human exploration of Mars, even as he recognizes the need for precursor robot explorations.)

Science fiction writers have long explored Mars. One of the most realistic depictions of life on Mars comes in the book Mars Crossing by Geoffrey Landis. It’s a very scientific look at the very human enterprise of exploring Mars. The attention to detail gave me a few “I didn’t know that” moments, such as the fact that due to the heavy hydrogen peroxide content of the Mars surface and atmosphere, visitors who are exposed to it (and it would be inevitable on a long-term exploration) would find their hair bleaching out! Who’d a thought Mars would be the ultimate hair salon!

Blonding hair notwithstanding, human visitors to Mars will be profoundly changed by the experience in many ways. Witness the life-changing experiences that astronauts who have only visited the Moon and low-Earth orbit have described when talking about their work in space. I can only imagine our first Mars explorer standing there on the new frontier, looking around the dusty, desert surface, and then searching out Earth in the night-time Martian sky. It won’t be much larger than that famous “pale blue dot” that the late Carl Sagan was so fond of describing. I wonder what they’ll say when faced with the enormity of the distance they’ve traveled? Perhaps, like Neil Armstrong did when HE reached the Moon in 1969, they’ll have a prepared speech to share with those of us left back home. I just hope it will be peppered with a few repetitions of “wow!” and “It’s so beautiful!”