Mars One has announced that, of the initial 202,586 applicants, only 100 remain in the running to be the first humans on Mars. The latest round of cuts came after 660 astronaut candidates participated in personal, online interviews with Mars One’s Chief Medical Officer Norbert Kraft, M.D.

According to a statement from the organization, candidates had an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of the risks involved, their mission and their team spirit for a mission from which no one is likely to return to Earth.

“The large cut in candidates is an important step towards finding out who has the right stuff to go to Mars. These aspiring martians provide the world with a glimpse into who the modern day explorers will be,” said Bas Lansdorp, Co-founder & CEO of Mars One in a statement.

The remaining candidates include 50 men and 50 women, 39 Americans, 31 Europeans, 16 Asians and seven candidates each from Africa and Oceana.

“We were impressed with how many strong candidates participated in the interview round, which made it a very difficult selection” said Dr. Norbert Kraft.

A full list of the Mars 100 candidates is available on the Mars One community website.

From this point the focus will be on composing teams that can endure the hardships of a permanent Mars settlement. The 100 candidates selected will have their first real training at a copy of the Mars Outpost on Earth and demonstrate their ability to perform as a team.

“Being one of the best individual candidates does not automatically make you the greatest team player, so I look forward to seeing how the candidates progress and work together in the upcoming challenges.” said Dr. Norbert Kraft.

Candidates who were not selected, as well as individuals who have not yet applied, will have another opportunity when the next application round begins in 2015.

Mars One, a Netherlands based not-for-profit, officially launched in 2012. The organization’s plan is to send the first four Martian colonists on a one-way trip to the Red Planet in 2025, a decade ahead of NASA’s human exploration mission Orion.

Mars One is being funded through a variety of endeavors. The not-for-profit is the majority shareholder in Interplanetary Media Group and the bulk of the funds for the mission are expected to come from a reality TV series based on the first Mars colonial mission. The rest of the funds are expected to come from sponsorships, donations, crowd-funding and merchandise sales.

The current timeline for Mars One includes the launch of a communications satellite in 2018, a rover mission in 2020 and a cargo mission to carry supplies for the colonists in 2022 before the crew is launched in 2024.
A second Mars One colonist ship is scheduled to depart in 2026.

Even before landing and establishing a home in the harsh Martian landscape, the first colonists will have to endure the rigors of confinement with a handful of people in a small craft for several months. Precautions will need to be taken to protect the crew from intense cosmic radiation, a hurdle that NASA too is still trying to overcome.

Once there, colonists will have to create a self sustaining habitat capable of producing enough food and water for the small colony.

The Mars One mission has faced a variety of criticisms on technical and financial grounds as well as accusations that the timeline for the project is unrealistic.

“Even ignoring the potential mismatch between the project income and its costs and questions about its longer-term viability, the Mars One proposal does not demonstrate a sufficiently deep understanding of the problems to give real confidence that the project would be able to meet its very ambitious schedule,” Dr Chris Welch, director of Masters Programs at the International Space University in France told the BBC in 2012.

Despite the critics, however, the Mars One project keeps moving forward with no known change in the timeline that would put humans on Mars a decade from now.