"I Won’t Return” NASA Astrobiologist to be First Human on Mars | Alyssa Carson

Alyssa Carson is a 22-year-old astrobiologist and PhD candidate who has spent her entire life working toward becoming an astronaut and going to Mars. She holds a bachelor’s in astrobiology and is three years into a PhD in space and planetary science, studying microbes in Mars-like environments. She has already built an unusually extensive resume for someone her age, including scuba diving, skydiving, citizen science research with the International Space Academy (IAS), microgravity flights, spacesuit testing, and underwater habitat simulations. She is now eligible to apply to NASA’s astronaut selection process whenever it opens next.

Her path to becoming an astronaut has been deliberate and strategic from a very young age.

• She first attended space camp in Huntsville, Alabama as a child, which she describes as her “Disney World,” where she met astronauts and learned about different career paths in the space industry.
• She realized early on that “astronaut” is not a direct career you can study for in college, so she focused on building the strongest possible resume to differentiate herself among what are typically 18,000+ applicants per NASA selection cycle.
• NASA’s basic requirements are minimal: a master’s in a STEM field (or equivalent progress toward a PhD), some work experience, and for pilots, about 1,000 flight hours. The real competition is in standing out.
• She has been the youngest participant in virtually every program she has joined, often by a 10-year gap, starting with IAS at age 15.

She has pursued hands-on experience in environments that simulate space conditions.

• She completed an “aquanaut” certification, living submerged underwater for 24 hours in a facility about 30 feet down, to understand living in a habitat environment. Pizza was delivered to her underwater.
• She helped build and test an underwater contraption designed to simulate spacewalks in a large pool, using full scuba gear with full-face communications systems, as a prototype for spacesuit testing.
• She has done normal scuba diving, skydiving, and microgravity flights through her work with IAS.

Her goals have matured from childhood ambition to a more nuanced focus on contributing to the space industry in whatever capacity makes the most sense.

• As a child, she fixated on Mars because she thought it was the only place left to go, having already heard that humans had been to the moon.
• Now she emphasizes that she wants the best possible people on the first Mars mission, and she is open to contributing through research, mission support, or actually going herself.
• She separates what she can control (building her resume, doing research) from what she cannot (being selected, being assigned to a specific mission).

NASA’s current path to Mars runs through the moon via the Artemis program.

• NASA does not have an official hard date for a Mars mission, but the Artemis program is designed to establish a permanent presence on the moon as a stepping stone.
• Artemis 3 will test lunar lander systems, Artemis 4 plans to land on the moon, and the goal is to establish a sustained habitat there before pushing to Mars.
• The program is a hybrid effort: NASA provides some components (like the SLS rocket and Orion capsule) while commercial companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin provide others (like lander systems).
• Elon Musk recently shifted SpaceX’s public focus back to the moon before Mars, which Alyssa sees as a sensible acknowledgment that many technological challenges remain.

The timeline for a Mars mission is constrained by orbital mechanics and technological readiness.

• Launch windows to Mars are limited and depend on the relative positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits. Mars ranges from about 33 million to 250 million miles from Earth.
• The year 2033 has been discussed as an optimal window because Mars will be unusually close to Earth, but Alyssa considers this very ambitious given current progress.
• With current chemical rocket technology, the trip takes 6 to 9 months each way, and astronauts would need to stay on Mars for a significant period before the return window opens, making total mission durations extremely long.

Nuclear propulsion could be the key technology that makes Mars missions feasible.

• NASA plans to test a nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) system on a satellite mission to Mars, potentially as early as 2028.
• NEP uses fission to generate heat, which is converted to electricity via a gas turbine, which then ionizes a gas propellant into plasma that is continuously expelled through thrusters.
• The goal is to reduce the Mars transit time from 6 months to 6 weeks, which would dramatically reduce radiation exposure, consumables needed, and mission risk.
• The nuclear propulsion system would be deployed in low Earth orbit by a conventional rocket and then activated for the Mars transit. The launch vehicle itself would not be nuclear.
• This would be the first real use of nuclear propulsion for a space mission.

Radiation is the second biggest challenge after transit time.

• Astronauts traveling to Mars and living on its surface would be exposed to dangerous levels of cosmic radiation, as Mars lacks a protective magnetic field and has a very thin atmosphere.
• Proposed solutions include building habitats below the surface of Mars to use the planet’s own mass as shielding, or developing radiation-protective materials for capsules.
• One fascinating area of research involves a black fungus discovered at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site that appears to feed on radiation. Scientists have hypothesized it could potentially be used to help shield astronauts during deep space travel.
• Organisms in general are far more adaptable than humans. Tardigrades have survived on the outside of the International Space Station, and astronauts have found microorganisms growing on their gloves after spacewalks.

Alyssa’s astrobiology research focuses on whether microbes could have survived on early Mars.

• Current-day Mars is inhospitable: high radiation, thin atmosphere, no liquid water on the surface. But geological evidence suggests Mars once had liquid water, a thicker atmosphere, and conditions more similar to early Earth.
• Her research tests whether organisms known to survive in extreme environments on Earth could have survived in the conditions that existed on early Mars.
• She also studies the broader question of planetary protection: if humans go to Mars, how do we avoid contaminating the surface with Earth organisms, and how do we ensure that anything we find is genuinely Martian and not something we brought with us?

Current Mars rovers are not equipped to search for life.

• Rovers like Curiosity (in Gale Crater) and Perseverance are focused on geological study, not astrobiology. They drill only an inch or so into the surface.
• Most astrobiologists believe that if evidence of past life exists on Mars, it would be found in the deep subsurface, requiring dedicated drilling missions that do not yet exist.
• Rovers operate extremely slowly due to the 15-to-30-minute communication delay between Earth and Mars. A simple command to move two feet can take 30 minutes to confirm.
• We do not have any pristine samples from Mars. Martian meteorites that landed on Earth have been altered by passing through the atmosphere, so all Mars research relies on simulation materials.

The most promising places to search for life in our solar system are not Mars but the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

• Europa Clipper is a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which is believed to have a liquid water ocean beneath an ice shell. The mission will assess whether the basic ingredients for life (liquid water, carbon, oxygen) are present.
• Dragonfly is a planned mission to Titan, a moon of Saturn, which has lakes and rivers of liquid methane and ethane on its surface. Life there, if it exists, would be fundamentally different from anything on Earth.
• There is also speculation about possible life in the atmosphere of Venus and even in the rings of Saturn, though these ideas are more speculative.
• The OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu successfully collected and returned a sample to Earth that contained amino acids, the fundamental building blocks of proteins, demonstrating that the basic ingredients for life are abundant in space.

The search for life on Mars is complicated by the risk of contamination.

• All robotic missions to Mars are sterilized, but there is always a chance that Earth organisms hitched a ride on rovers or landers.
• If astronauts land on Mars, the contamination problem becomes much worse. This is why NASA designates certain “special regions” on Mars as having higher scientific value and restricts access.
• When Apollo astronauts returned from the moon, they were quarantined for about 21 days out of concern for “moon bugs.” Mars astronauts would face similar or more stringent quarantine protocols.

The Apollo 17 UFO files and moon landing conspiracies have resurfaced in public discourse.

• Recently released government files include photographs from the Apollo 17 mission (1972) showing three dots in a triangular formation in the lunar sky. The Pentagon stated there is no consensus on the nature of the anomaly.
• The Apollo 17 astronauts reportedly described seeing jagged, zooming objects “like fireworks” or “the 4th of July” outside their window.
• A Japanese space program head and NASA historian who was close to Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan recounted that Cernan told him the real reason Apollo ended at 17 was because “they told me never to come back” and “save humanity on Earth” because extraterrestrials did not want humans interfering with their activities on the moon.
• Alyssa notes that many supposed UFO sightings by astronauts have turned out to have mundane explanations, such as early Gemini astronauts mistaking frozen urine droplets for “fireflies” outside their window.
• She believes the universe is almost certainly too vast for Earth to be the only place with life, but she thinks microbes will be the first thing we find, not intelligent civilizations.

The Apollo program ended as much for financial and political reasons as for any other.

• During the Apollo era, NASA received about 4% of the federal budget. Today it receives about 0.5%.
• The Apollo program was driven by the space race with the Soviet Union, motivated largely by fear (especially after Sputnik) and national prestige rather than pure scientific logic.
• Alyssa argues that sending robots to the moon would have been more efficient and safer than sending humans, but the point was to prove that humans could do it.
• The original Constellation program (which would have returned humans to the moon) was scrapped and reworked multiple times before becoming the current Artemis program.

Terraforming Mars is theoretically discussed but practically far beyond current capabilities.

• The most commonly cited idea, popularized by Elon Musk, is to detonate nuclear weapons at the poles to release frozen CO2 and water vapor to thicken the atmosphere and warm the planet.
• Alyssa considers this extremely unrealistic. Even if you could heat Mars, the planet lacks a magnetic field to retain an atmosphere, so gases would escape back into space.
• Mars’s atmosphere is currently so thin that simply pumping oxygen into it would not work. You would first need to create a magnetosphere and a thick atmosphere to trap gases.
• Even optimistic estimates for terraforming span centuries or millennia. Alyssa does not think Mars will become a “second Earth” within our lifetime, though she believes initial human missions are achievable.

Venus, despite being closer to Earth and similar in size, is far more hostile than Mars.

• Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, even hotter than Mercury, due to an extreme greenhouse effect from its thick atmosphere.
• It is also volcanically active and has extremely high surface pressure. Landers from various countries have lasted only minutes before being destroyed.
• Our understanding of Venus’s surface is minimal because of these conditions. Mars is the more practical target for human exploration.
• Over very long timescales, as the sun evolves, Venus could theoretically move into a more habitable zone, but this is on the scale of millions or billions of years.

Space junk is one of the most pressing and underappreciated threats to the space industry.

• Thousands of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, and debris fragments (down to the size of paint chips) orbit Earth at high speeds.
• The Kessler syndrome describes a cascading scenario where collisions between objects create more debris, which causes more collisions, potentially making low Earth orbit impassable.
• Proposed solutions include using spacecraft to push dead satellites out of orbit so they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, but no large-scale cleanup effort is currently underway.
• Alyssa worries that humanity could literally trap itself on Earth by making space too dangerous to traverse.

The International Space Station is scheduled for decommissioning at the end of 2030.

• The ISS is the size of a football field and has been continuously occupied since its construction, which was the primary purpose of the 135-space shuttle missions.
• It was built through the space shuttle program and has been the primary platform for learning about long-duration spaceflight, microgravity research, and sustainability in space.
• Current plans involve deorbiting it, with parts burning up in the atmosphere and the remainder landing in the ocean. The original plan to sell it to the private company Axiom fell through; Axiom now prefers to build its own station.
• The ISS has taught critical lessons about self-sustainability: sending a single gallon of water there is enormously expensive, so systems for recycling water and air have been developed that will be essential for Mars missions.

Reusable rockets will likely be part of any Mars mission architecture, but not in a simple way.

• Alyssa expects a hybrid approach, similar to Artemis, where some components are reusable and others are not.
• The idea of launching from the moon to Mars is appealing because escaping the moon’s gravity (much lower than Earth’s) requires far less fuel. If fuel depots or manufacturing facilities could be established on the lunar surface, it could serve as a staging point.
• For a Mars mission to be sustainable, a massive amount of material (potentially a million tons) would need to be pre-positioned on the surface, including habitats, solar panels, and manufacturing equipment, all sent ahead of any human arrival.

Alyssa recently completed a cross-country documentary project called “Driven to Explore” tied to the Artemis 2 mission.

• She watched the Artemis 2 launch from Cape Canaveral, then drove across the country to San Diego for the splashdown 10 days later.
• Along the way, she interviewed women in STEM fields who worked on the SLS rocket, the Orion capsule, and other aspects of the space industry.
• Artemis 2 was a lunar flyby mission (no landing), sending humans further from Earth than any previous mission. It was the first time NASA astronauts launched on a NASA vehicle since the space shuttle program ended.
• The splashdown occurred about 60 miles offshore, too far for civilians to see directly. Alyssa went scuba diving in a kelp forest off San Diego and spotted the Navy recovery vessel towing the Orion capsule back to shore.
• She has done most of her scuba diving in Florida and the Caribbean and found the cold, unpredictable waters of the West Coast a significant challenge.

The anomalies in the Cydonia region of Mars remain unexplained but are likely natural formations.

• The so-called “face on Mars” and “pyramid” in Cydonia were first photographed in 1976 and have fueled speculation about an ancient Martian civilization.
• The D&M Pyramid (a large eroded mesa) is about five miles across, significantly larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Mars also has Olympus Mons (three times taller than Everest) and Valles Marineris (a canyon the size of the United States).
• Alyssa notes that Mars has features of enormous scale, which is consistent with its geological history and does not require artificial explanations.
• The Silurian hypothesis (proposed by Adam Frank) raises the interesting question of whether evidence of a prior industrial civilization on Earth would even be detectable after millions of years, suggesting that absence of evidence on Mars is not evidence of absence.

Alyssa can be found online under the handle “NASA Blueberry.”

• The nickname “Blueberry” originated at space camp when she wore a dark blue flight suit that made her stand out, and it stuck as her call sign.
• She started her social media presence posting photos for family but gradually built a following around her space-related activities and ambitions.
• Her website and all social media accounts use the NASA Blueberry handle.