Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 151, rendezvous with Mars. I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers,

astronauts all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight.

We're continuing our Mars monthly series with Patrick Chai, PhD, who humbly requested to be referred to as an aerospace

engineer at Langley Research Center in Virginia, but most would call him a rocket scientist.

Patrick hones in on the challenges and needs

for getting to Mars.

The journey from Earth to Mars

will be long, somewhere on the order of nine months.

And with that comes a series of challenges, some

complicated orbital mechanics and a whole range of options that consider things

like propulsion, duration, timing, staging, and more.

Yes, thanks to probes and rovers of the past,

we've landed on Mars, but a human landing

will be like nothing else before.

The transport will have to be much larger.

And with humans on board, you're limited on the kinds of routes you can take to get to Mars.

Sounds like a simple consideration.

Yes, of course there will be humans.

But it makes things a lot harder.

Buckle up everybody and all aboard to the Red Planet.

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