The astronaut of the Apollo 15 crew spoke about the difficulties that the Arab Emirates are facing on their way to landing on Mars.
The UAE space program is a "very complex thing" that will provide an opportunity to unite countries to achieve a common goal, said astronaut Alfred Warden.
Alfred, 85, was a pilot of the Apollo 15 Lunar Mission Command Module in 1971 and is one of 24 people on Earth who visited the Moon.
Speaking at the Dubai Airshow, Warden said that the UAE’s plan to send the probe to Mars in 2020, as well as to build the first city on Mars by 2117, would be extremely difficult to execute from a technological point of view.
In his opinion, so far no country can cope with this task, and the goal of the UAE will rally many states around itself.
Among the technological problems that the UAE will face in a future manned mission to Mars, Warden noted a combination of the main technical tasks and the consequences of lengthy space flights.
"We need a propulsion system that can deliver us back and forth, and we need to figure out how to provide enough food on board for a year and a half for the crew," he said.
Warden also noted problems that still have no solution, for example, radiation on Mars.
According to a veteran astronaut, space exploration is ultimately the key to the survival of humans as a species.
“The Earth is a rather small object, and we can do great damage to it,” he said, “I believe the goal of the space program is to enable us to go somewhere else when we can no longer live here "
