A woman is set to become the first to give birth to a Martian baby, within the framework of plan to colonize the planet Mars.
Maggie Lieu, from Tile Hill, Coventry, England, may be one of the first people to make the 140 million-mile one-way trip to the Red Planet.
According to Coventry Telegraph, the 24-year-old has already made the 600-strong shortlist to make the USD 6 billion trip, down from 200,000 initial applicants to the project known as Mars One.
Mothers face challenges everyday here on Earth, but on Mars Maggie would have to contend with temperatures as low as -62C, lethal levels of radiation and the dangers of suffocation, starvation and dehydration.
“To start a colony we would have to have children on Mars, eventually it would happen, it would be challenging, nobody has done any research on giving birth in a low-gravity environment,” she said.
Groups of four are scheduled to leave every two years from 2024 and the former Coventry schoolgirl, now studying astrophysics at Birmingham University, said she was excited by the prospect of the ten-year training program.
She added that the group would be forced to learn skills ranging from medicine and agriculture to plumbing and electronics as they looked to make the planet their permanent home.
“Everything we need on Earth we would have to create up there,” she said. We would need to grow our own food and create our own oxygen,” she explained, adding that “because there is no magnetic field around Mars the levels of radiation are very high.”
“The trip is one way because there are no launch pads on Mars and it would require much more than the $6 billion currently budgeted for the trip to bring us home,” she stated.
According to the applicant, another problem is the effect low gravity environments have on the human body, since when astronauts from the space station return to Earth they can be practically disabled even though they train every day to lessen the effects.
“They need to learn to walk again, their heart is weakened, muscles shrink and bone density decreases.
“But I believe, at the rate technology is advancing, we will be able to bring people back from Mars one day,” she said.