Twenty years ago, people wouldn’t be confusing a sci-fi movie for a true story, like some moviegoers today are with The Martian. That’s how far we’ve come. We are closer than ever to putting a human on the surface of Mars. It will be the first human to step foot on another planet, and it’s going to happen in our lifetimes. I’m not sure what is cooler than that.

In my latest Because Science, I’m running down NASA’s own timeline for the journey to Mars. And while we won’t have to save a Matt Damon from an outpost on the red planet anytime soon, we will be exploring it within the next few decades…unless Elon Musk gets there first.

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