NASA has special reservations for Teachers and Farmers for Mars Tour

Nasa wants YOU (yes, YOU) to go to Mars! That is, if you applied to be an astronaut in the last round of recruitment and can beat something like 18,300 other people who also did. But, hey, don’t get bogged down with details.

The space agency previously created gorgeous, retro-futurist tourism posters to tempt us into pleasure cruises on Europa and nightclub-hopping on starless, rogue exoplanets. But Mars isn’t for tourists – it’s for explorers.

As part of the space agency’s “Journey to Mars” campaign, it’s working hard to inspire a new generation of adventurers, and these posters – created for an exhibit at the Kennedy Center in 2009 – show kids that anyone can have dreams of going into space.

Want to be an astronaut one day? Consider becoming a teacher. Lots of people don’t realize this, but all you need to be considered is a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and three years of teaching experience, even at the K-12 level.

Sure, Nasa tends to pick folks with head-spinning combinations of advanced degrees and military flight experience, but technically your average high school chemistry teacher has a shot.

Nasa is also looking for farmers, which isn’t just a cheeky shout-out to “The Martian.” The space agency is working hard to figure out how to feed folks on long space missions.

Astronauts on the International Space Station spent much of the past year experimenting with growing (and eating) lettuce in space, and now that they’ve successfully grown flowering plants, they’ll probably move on to more-delicate crops such as tomatoes.

Growing plants on a Martian base would pose its own challenges, but there are already scientists on Earth trying to replicate the process with faux Martian soil.

The Journey to Mars campaign – which would have humans on the Red Planet within 20 years – might not be very realistic. There are a lot of technical hurdles to clear, and some say we haven’t got the time or the funding to face those challenges.

But Nasa’s leaders won’t get more of the latter without public support, so you can’t blame them for trying to get us amped for a trip that might not happen anytime soon.

The NewSpace Journal says it obtained a copy of the paper Tito plans to present in Montana and gives a summary of its main thrust.

Tito’s paper discusses “a crewed free-return Mars mission that would fly by Mars, but not go into orbit around the planet or land on it. This 501-day mission would launch in January 2018, using a modified SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket,” the NewSpace Journal writes.

“According to the paper, existing environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) technologies would allow such a spacecraft to support two people for the mission, although in Spartan condition.”

The NewSpace Journal says it obtained a copy of the paper Tito plans to present in Montana and gives a summary of its main thrust.

The mission would be privately financed and cheaper than previous estimates for manned Mars efforts, the NewSpace Journal adds, though no overall cost is given.

The purported involvement of California-based SpaceX is not a huge surprise, as company founder Elon Musk has repeatedly stressed his desire to help humanity reach and eventually colonize Mars.

Indeed, SpaceX has been developing a mission concept called “Red Dragon,” which would use its Dragon capsule to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

A 501-day mission would pose potentially serious physiological and psychological issues for astronauts (standard stints aboard the space station are currently just six months).

Researchers have tried to understand the psychological and sociological effects of being isolated in cramped quarters for long stretches, notably during the Russia-based Mars500 mock mission, which wrapped up in November 2011. But the physiological effects may be tougher to simulate and mitigate, experts say.

Seattle design firm Invisible Creature — which has done work for clients like Nike, Seattle Weekly, Target, and many more — released three gorgeous new space-themed travel posters commissioned by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a 2016 calendar that will be given to NASA staff, scientists, engineers, and government officials.

JPL will also release digital copies of each month’s artwork for free, but you can buy physical prints of Invisible Creature’s posters on the firm’s website.

The idea is not terribly new — JPL has commissioned posters, infographics, and other artwork in the past, and you can dig through a pretty extensive archive on the lab’s website. But there is something striking about Invisible Creature’s posters and the detail they involve. Each one rewards closer inspection and repeat viewings thanks to some clever design.

The project was a bit of a dream come true for Don Clark, who started Invisible Creature with his brother Ryan Clark in 2006. “We, of course, were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at NASA for 30 years, and so this is kind of our first NASA project,” Clark tells The Verge.

Each poster will appear on a different month of the calendar, and they each carry a different theme. One, called “The Grand Tour,” is an ode to NASA’s Voyager missions.

The twin spacecraft extensively studied the planets that make up our solar system after they were launched in the early 1970s.

NASA used the gravity of each of these planets to increase the velocity of each spacecraft, giving them enough of boost to reach the outer edges of our solar system.

Both of those components of the Voyager missions make up the basis for the poster.

The other two posters are reminiscent of the ones made by SpaceX last May (or the “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” posters commissioned by JPL a little over a year ago) in that they advertise particular locations that humans might someday visit.

One implores travelers to visit “more than 100 breathtaking geysers” on the south pole of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, while the other teases a more familiar destination: Mars.

The Mars poster blends symbols of rockets, planes, agriculture, and one of the rovers into a scene that imagines an established human presence on the Red Planet.

It almost makes it feel like we’re just years away from NASA being able to offer trips to and from Mars — that is, until you remember the agency has no plan or money to fund such a trip.