The American space agency NASA is seeking public ideas on how to keep the astronauts at the Red planet safe.

It has been reported that the ‘Journey to Mars Challenge’ will give a $5,000 award to each of the three winning participants who describe an original idea that could assist the human exploration of Mars.

NASA in a statement about the challenge wrote that the proposal must be one that could be technically achievable, economically sustainable, and must require minimum reliance on support from Earth.

“This could include shelter, food, water, breathable air, communication, exercise, social interactions and medicine, but participants are encouraged to consider innovative and creative elements beyond these examples”, the agency said.

Furthermore, it is known that launch costs are considered one of the key barriers to space exploration majorly in Mars exploration.

NASA also said it would welcome ideas on what to bring on these missions and how often to resupply them.

The agency said the resupply aspect is necessarily important to the space agency because resupply opportunities to Mars would happen only every 500 days, and the respective orbits between Earth and Mars make it more difficult to send spacecraft at other times.

The agency is majorly looking forward to ideas that are backed up by a strategy including a process to develop, test, implement and operate the system or capability.

The ‘Journey to Mars’ challenge was announced the same week as the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C., a conference in which NASA is participating.

NASA is not the only one who is planning to send humans to the red Planet for exploration and establishing colonies.

A Dutch non-profit foundation MarsOne is planning to send humans on a one-way trip to the red planet in 2026. Thousands of people have applied to take part in the suicidal sojourn.