This Woman Could Be The First Mum To Give Birth On Mars

This Woman Could Be The First Mum To Give Birth On Mars
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This woman could become the first to give birth on Mars, as part of the Mars One project to inhabit the red planet.

It sounds like the fictional plot of a far-fetched science fiction film, but for 24-year-old Maggie Lieu from Coventry, this could become her reality in the not-too-distant future.

Maggie, an astrophysics student at Birmingham University, is one of 600 people on a shortlist to be part of the Mars One project.

She finds out next month if she will make the final cut and be among the 40 people selected to make the 140 million mile one-way trip.

Maggie is aware that motherhood on Mars would throw up a whole new set of challenges - including wrapping a baby up to protect them from temperatures as low as -62 and zero-gravity winding - but that hasn't put her off planning to start a family.

"To start a colony we would have to have children on Mars, eventually it would happen," Maggie told the Coventry Telegraph.

"It would be challenging, nobody has done any research on giving birth in a low-gravity environment.

"I think it would be a funny thing because the first child born on Mars would be the first Martian!

"But I don't think it would be much different to some of the living conditions and relationships people have with their children here on Earth."

Maggie said she was excited by the prospect of beginning the 10 year training program, which will cover everything from medicine to plumbing and agriculture to electronics.

"One of the biggest challenges will be communication," she added. "It can take anything between three and 22 minutes just to send a message so we will have to learn how to deal with that.

"The trip is one way because there are no launch pads on Mars and it would require much more than the $6 billion currently budgeted for the trip to bring us home.

"I'm looking forward to it more now then when I applied because it is beginning to seem more real."

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