The Planetary Society, the world’s largest non-governmental organization (NGO)  dedicated to promoting space exploration, announced this week that it expects people to be able to orbit the red planet by 2033 and land on it by 2039.  The announcement came after a three day workshop on “Humans Orbiting Mars.” Not only does the NGO see these developments as being within reach from a technical and practical point of view, but they think NASA’s human exploration budget has the capacity to fund these projects.

Nearly 70 scientists, including Bill Nye “the Science Guy,” attended the three day workshop in Washington, DC where they examined the feasibility, practicality of sending people to Mars, or orbit and land.  They worked off a plan developed by NASA for such expeditions.  As they envision it, the mission will last about 30 months — that’s nine months travel each way.

The group does expect there to be obstacles but these will be more political than technical  or scientific as getting the US government to fund such projects can be challenging.  Not everyone in Washigton, DC sees the benefit of investing in space exploration.

“In the past, when the question of humans to Mars came up, I would typically cite a number of major hurdles: biomedical, launch systems and so forth,” said Scott Hubbard, a Planetary Society Board of Directors member. “And as of today, I think that those risks have either been reduced or you know how to minimize them, and so I am at the same place that John [Logsdon] and Bill [Nye] [are], that I think the issue now is […] political will.”