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In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr Baumgartner, who became the first man to break the sound barrier after leaping from 128,100ft above the Earth almost two weeks ago, urged the US Government to divert the money it spends on Mars toon environmental projects on Earth.
"A lot of guys they are talking about landing on Mars," he said. "Because [they say] it is so important to land on Mars because we would learn a lot more about our planet here, our Earth, by going to Mars which actually makes no sense to me because we know a lot about Earth and we still treat our planet, which is very fragile, in a really bad way.
"So I think we should perhaps spend all the money [which is] going to Mars to learn about Earth. I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think it does make sense."

For the first time in the history of humankind, economical participation in space exploration is a reality. With Mars One's recent launch of a crowdfunding campaign, it's now possible to send a personal item to distances far beyond your wildest dreams. For many, the Mars One mission is the gateway to a new era in man's historic reach for the stars.

For about 50 years, government organizations have been funding and managing space exploration across the globe. Government run exploration, funded by public monies, has provided limited access to most citizens of those countries. In the last few years, private organizations such as Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Eric Anderson's Space Adventures have made space exploration possible for the mega-rich. A flight with Virgin Galactic 68 miles above Earth goes for a cool $250,000 while the potential 2017 flight to the moon from Space Adventures is rumored to cost an astronomical $150 million. There are others in between, but none as accessible as Mars One. Bas Lansdorp, co-founder of Mars One, has set his sights on involving the everyday man and woman in space exploration

Mars One will establish a human settlement on Mars. You can participate in the first major step: a private Mars Lander and Satellite mission in 2018.

The Mars One project has narrowed down its list of applicants to 100 people, who will now go through further training before the final team is selected.

More than 200,000 people applied to Mars One in 2013, hoping to be chosen to colonize Mars. Applicants had to be at least 18 years old, healthy and between 5'2" and 6'3" tall, as well as fulfilling various personality requirements such as exhibiting adaptability, resiliency, and resourcefulness. During the next round of the selection process, the number was whittled down to 660 during a series of interviews and tests, while the next round will give the remaining 100 people a chance to train in teams in an earthbound copy of the future Mars outpost.

Mars One will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Crews of four will depart every two years, starting in 2024. Our first unmanned mission will be launched in 2018. Participate in this mission to Mars through our crowdfunding campaign.

How feasible is the Mars One plan?
Currently, it's not. One of the biggest claims made by the Mars One team is that absolutely no new technology needs to be developed for the success of their mission, which is setting up a colony on Mars. We found that there are several cases for systems like the environmental control and life support where that's just not true.

As soon as NASA announced finding evidence of liquid water on Mars last month, speculation erupted that scientists may be able to answer the age-old question: Is there life on Mars?

Technically, we already know the answer.

"The answer is, 'Yes,' and it's probably our own life," says David J. Smith, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

Here on Earth, bacteria cover every surface we touch. And despite efforts to keep spacecraft as clean as possible, bacteria have likely hitchhiked all the way to Mars on NASA missions. Bacterial contamination was detected on the rovers that have driven across the red Martian desert.

A father of four, who applied for a one-way-ticket to live on Mars, could be looking at a divorce as a result of his extraterrestrial ambition.

Ken Sullivan made it the next stage of the Mars One project, which could potentially see him making a new life on Mars - but his wife and children are not happy about the news.

Mr Sullivan, who lives in Utah, is among the 1,058 applicants selected so far who could colonise the red planet and never return to their families and friends on Earth.

In April 2013, Mars One opened up applications for aspiring astronauts. By the time the application period had closed, more than 200,000 people had applied. Mars One's goal is to pick 28 to 40 candidates by the end of 2015 and train them for their mission.

Here are the steps Kraft is currently undergoing to find the crews for the Mars mission:

A pretty neat interactive gadget that lets users explore the Mars Rover.

"One of the biggest bummers about Mars Rover Curiosity's epic landing is that there was no news crew on the surface to catch footage of the descent. This full resolution video of Curiosity touching down from its own point of view is the next best thing."

A very cool opinion piece detailing reasons that we should pursue a manned mission to Mars. Could be used to study the topic or to study argumentation.

"Russia plans to send probes to Jupiter and Venus, land a network of unmanned stations on Mars and ferry Russian cosmonauts to the surface of the Moon - all by 2030. That's according to a leaked document from the country's space agency. Wired U.K. The cosmically ambitious plans were submitted to the government by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) this month, according to a report in the Kommersant, Russia's business-focused daily newspaper. The document lays out a blueprint for the country's space industry to follow in the next 18 years, up to 2030. It's rare for Russia to set a deadline for its future space plans."

The first color pictures from the NASA space probe expedition to Mars have now been published. They look like -- well, they look like pictures of a lifeless, distant planet. They show blank, empty landscapes. They show craters and boulders. They show red sand. Death Valley, the most desolate of American deserts, at least contains strange cacti, vicious scorpions, the odd oasis. Mars has far less than that. Not only does the planet have no life, it has no air, no water, no warmth. The temperature on the Martian surface hardly rises much above zero degrees Fahrenheit, and can drop several hundred degrees below that.

Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian surface for over a decade - that's an amazing ten years longer than the 3-month primary mission it began in January 2004. But with its great successes, inevitable age-related issues have surfaced and mission engineers are being challenged by an increasingly troubling bout of rover "amnesia."

Joining Curiosity and Opportunity in 2020, the rover's payload will carry instruments that will cost about $130 million to develop. One of the major goals of NASA's next Mars rover is to process the atmosphere's carbon dioxide into oxygen for human breathing and potentially to oxidize rocket fuel. Scientists also hope to collect rock and soil samples that a future mission could bring back to Earth.

"In science fact, though, there's greater concern that Earth-dwellers-specifically bacteria and microorganisms-could arrive at extraterrestrial destinations. As NASA sends rovers to Mars, plans a trip to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, and looks for an ocean on Saturn's moon Enceladus, the hope is to find life-forms on those interstellar bodies. To ensure that doesn't include forms that originated on Earth-and that the new environment isn't compromised the way Earth ecosystems can be by invasive species or infectious diseases-NASA is now thoroughly cleaning its space-bound vessels."