Mars 2019? 2029?

A few days ago the folks at Astronomy Picture of the Day had a nice shot of an astronaut looking out the window at Earth from the International Space Station. Oddly enough, the just the other night, I had a dream about flying over the surface of Mars, and so when I saw the ISS picture, I thought back to that dream.

The dream of going to Mars is one that a lot of us have had for many years.  Many of the missions we see going on today are based on planning sessions that first occurred back in the 1980s, and now — decades later those spacecraft are doing the jobs we dreamed they’d be doing.

I don’t doubt that sometime in the next decade or two, the first Mars explorers will leave Earth to head for the Red Planet.  If they do, they’ll probably spend some time in orbit around the planet before heading to the surface. And, as such, I imagine that the scene from ISS that so caught my attention may well get played out for real by our children or their children — but high above Mars instead of Earth.