Is it reasonable to imagine that the human race will one day leave this solar system and travel to another planet? The Alpha Centauri star system, which is the closest from our Solar System, is made up of three neighboring stars: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B and Alpha Centauri C, also known as Proxima Centauri. On March 27, 2015, researchers announced the possible discovery of a planet situated in the habitable zone of a star close to Alpha Centauri B, at a distance of 4.37 light-years from Earth, a discovery that will need confirmation in the years to come. On August 24, 2016, astronomers confirmed the discovery of a rocky planet orbiting Proxima Centauri and situated in its habitable zone, with a mass at least 1.3 times that of Earth. Assuming that one of those planets could support or shelter life, can man overcome the problem of distance?

As far as it may seem, the perspective of such a travel should not be considered a foolish dream. The technology required to accomplish such a feat has yet to reach operational levels, but even in its infancy, the progress so far is huge. Back in 1909, when Louis Blériot completed the first flight across the English Channel (on a plane that looked much like a pedal boat with sails), who would have thought that only 33 years later, we would have built the first nuclear reactor capable of carrying out a sustained and controlled chain reaction? Who would have believed, during the onset of the Great Depression, that man would set foot on the moon only 40 years later? And who, back in 1941, in the heart of the Second World War, could have imagined that a Soviet lander would reach the planet Mars only 30 years later?

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has tentatively predicted that the first manned mission to Mars will occur in the 2030s, a voyage that will first require solutions for a number of problems related to manned space travel: human relationships in confined spaces, protection against cosmic rays, the body's capacity to adapt to weightlessness, landing difficulties and autonomous survival for more than two years, of which 500 days will be on the red planet itself. The Mars One project, which aims to colonize Mars, has already garnered 200,000 potential candidates.