NASA says it could be another 20 years before humans touch down on Mars, but in a sense, the Mars Society has been exploring the red planet for more than a decade – in Utah. Photo: Csilla Orgel, a geologist of Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission, makes her way back to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in the Utah desert March 3, 2013. The MDRS aims to investigate the feasibility of a human exploration of Mars and uses the Utah desert's Mars-like terrain to simulate working conditions on the red planet. Scientists, students and enthusiasts work together developing field tactics and studying the terrain. All outdoor exploration is done wearing simulated spacesuits and carrying air supply packs and crews live together in a small communication base with limited amounts of electricity, food, oxygen and water. Everything needed to survive must be produced, fixed and replaced on site. (Photo by Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

An isolated five-floor building stands in the middle of a new road on November 22, 2012 in Wenling, Zhejiang Province of China. Zhejiang Province of China. 67-year-old Luo Baogen and his 65-year-old wife from Xiazhangyang village still live in the half-demolished residential building, because they are dissatisfied with the relocation compensation. The road, which leads to the Wenling Railway Station, has not been put into use. (Photo by China Foto Press)

Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft with crew members of Expedition 59/60 Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Nick Hague lifts off from the launch pad at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 15 March 2019. Hague, Koch, and Ovchinin will spend six-and-a-half months living and working aboard the International Space Station. (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/EFE)

Passengers wait for a train to depart from the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, Friday January 13, 2017. Officials expect that Chinese travelers will make almost 3 billion trips during the holiday travel rush that starts runs through Feb. 21. These trips include intercity flights, trains and local bus rides to villages for China's 1.4 billion people. (Photo by Chinatopix via AP Photo)

North Korean commuters are seen through a door window waiting to board a train in a subway train station in Pyongyang, North Korea, 14 April 2017. North Koreans are preparing to celebrate the “Day of the Sun” festival, commemorating the 105th birthday anniversary of former supreme leader Kim Il-sung on 15 April, as tension over nuclear issues rise in the region. (Photo by How Hwee Young/EPA)

A handout phptopgraph made avaiable by NASA showing Russian support personnel roll the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft after it landed with with with Expedition 47 crew members Tim Kopra of NASA, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan 18 June 2016. Kopra, Peake, and Malenchenko are returning after six months in space where they served as members of the Expedition 46 and 47 crews onboard the International Space Station. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/EPA/NASA)

Police Cpl. Cristiano de Oliveira offers a hand to police dog “Corporal Oliveira”, at the 17 Military Police Battalion's station, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, April 7, 2022. Oliveira is one of two rescue dogs that have turned into local mascots and budding online influencers after joining their rescuers' ranks. (Photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP Photo)

Astronauts Nie Haisheng (C), Liu Boming (R) and Tang Hongbo are out of the return capsule of the Shenzhou-12 spaceship at the Dongfeng landing site in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on September 17, 2021. Three Chinese astronauts, the first sent to orbit for space station construction, have completed their three-month mission and returned to Earth safely on Friday. Photo by Lian Zhen/Xinhua News Agency)