Final 100 candidates selected for one-way trip to Mars

Mars One, a group that plans to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars, has announced its final 100 candidates. They have been selected from 200,000 applicants and will go on to further testing later this year, which they expect to include team-building exercises and later, isolation.

Eventually, 24 will be selected to make up six crews of four, which Mars One says they hope to launch to the Red Planet every two years from 2024, with the aim of starting a colony there.

The Dutch non-profit hopes to use existing technology to carry out the mission. However, the planet has always been a difficult target for exploration, with only around half of all unmanned missions succeeding. The journey itself is expected to take around seven months, and a recent MIT study found that, should the first explorers succeed in landing, using current technology they would likely survive just 68 days.

So what kind of person chooses to go to Mars on a one-way mission? The list of 100 finalists includes scientists and academics as well as those who are just seeking the ultimate adventure. We spoke to two of the British hopefuls.

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