A theoretical physicist's grand tour of how life emerged on earth and how human civilization will begin expanding beyond our home planet

'Adriana Marais combs the cosmic dust in her prospectus for all Mars adventurers' THE TIMES Moving to Mars may sound like science fiction but the truth is that today, scant decades since our first space missions, humanity is on the verge of becoming multiplanetary. SpaceX is building a Starship transport system; China successfully demonstrated crop growth on the Moon; and, in a space mining milestone, Japan's recent asteroid missions have returned samples to Earth. Adriana Marais has dedicated her life to preparing for extraplanetary settlement, considering not just the scientific and technological possibilities but also the ethical responsibilities of our species as we explore new frontiers. In 2019, she launched the Proudly Human: Off-World Project, a series of extreme habitation experiments investigating the capabilities necessary for life beyond our home planet. In this extraordinary era of rapid technological development, Marais explores the scientific and ethical questions that stands at the heart of scientific endeavour: How did we get here - and where are we going next?

"Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars, but how will life be on the red planet? Marais combs the cosmic dust for answers in her prospectus for all Mars adventurers, and she sets out the very hard, very (very) cold facts ... She is no starry-eyed space cadet, but a physicist working in the esoteric byways of quantum biology, so she knows one end of a dilithium crystal from the other. Space, one hardly needs to be reminded, is always trying to kill you, and this could provide a lesson in how much we should be tidying things up back home" - The Times