Andreas Mogensen, Denmark’s first astronaut, answered questions from Andreas Digens of Vice, not straying far from conventional wisdom when considering the next 35 years of space exploration. An excerpt:

“Question:

Do you believe we can send people to Mars? 

Andreas Mogensen:

I think we can send people to a new place in 2030. Whether it’s Mars, an asteroid, or to the moon again, I don’t know. But if we choose to send people to Mars, then we could easily do it. We are so much further ahead than when the US sent people to the moon. We can do it, but it’s a political decision. 

Question:

Do you think there’s life in space? 

Andreas Mogensen:

There are two further questions to that question. The first is: is there life on Mars? It looks like there’s been liquid water on the surface, which is the key to life. It also looks like the climate used to be warmer. That’s why we’re so interested in exploring it. We want to look for bacteria or microorganisms. If we find that, it would be huge, as it would be the first time we’d seen evidence of life on other planets.

Moreover, in the last 15 years we’ve been able to locate planets around other stars. Until 15 years ago, we only knew about eight or nine planets in our own solar system. Today, we’ve found 1,000 planets in orbit around other stars. What we want to do is to have powerful telescopes in orbit to look at all these planets that are very far away from Earth. Light years away. Then we can see if their atmospheres have oxygen and water, which is what a planet needs to sustain life. It could get very interesting in the next 50 years”