Mars One, a Dutch company that planned to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars and start the first human colony on the Red Planet, has been declared bankrupt.

The declaration was made in a Swiss court on Jan. 15 — and posted on Reddit this past weekend — officially dissolving Mars One Ventures AG.

"We are currently working with the administrator and an investor to find a solution moving forward, though at this moment that is all we can share," the company said in an email.

The bankruptcy affects the company's commercial arm, Mars One Ventures AG, but does not affect the non-profit Mars One Foundation, the email said.

A press release notes the company is "currently working on a solution with an investor."

Mars One began accepting applications in 2013 for a mission to establish a permanent settlement on Mars. It planned to launch a total of 24 people in groups of four every two years starting in 2024. The company claimed it could do so using existing technology.

It estimated launching the first four people would cost $6 billion US, and said it planned to raise the money through broadcasting rights and sponsorships.

More than 200,000 people from 100 countries applied, including more than 8,000 Canadians.

The company announced a shortlist of 100 people in 2015, including six Canadians.

However, experts questioned the plan and pointed out that it had some potentially deadly flaws, and some critics openly questioned whether it was a scam.

"The fact is the money is not there, the technology is not there," Elmo Keep, a journalist who has been investigating the company, told CBC Radio's q this past November. </s> A trip to Mars by 2033 is among the several long-term NASA goals included in a bill Congress just passed to fund the aerospace agency.

On Wednesday, the House followed the Senate’s lead by passing the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017, which appropriates $19.5 billion in spending for fiscal year 2017 for exploration, space operations, science, technology, education and more.

In addition to funding, the 146-page bill aims to “extend humanity’s reach into deep space, including cis-lunar space, the Moon, the surface and moons of Mars, and beyond.”

For human spaceflight and exploration, the bill sets three long-term goals to expand a permanent presence beyond low-Earth orbit, through crewed missions for the purpose of reaching deep space, including “habitation on another celestial body and a thriving space economy in the 21st century.”

In addition, the bill asks for a human mission “near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s,” and specifically asks for a study to be conducted on the feasibility of a human spaceflight mission to be launched in 2033.

Before the journey to Mars, NASA would be required to create a “human exploration roadmap” that would lay out their step-by-step plans for how to get humans from low-orbit Earth to Mars in that time frame.

New investments in the International Space Station (ISS) would allow the facility to continue to be utilized until at least 2024 and would make the station a jumping off point for missions to Mars.

NASA will also be provided with funding to study Jupiter’s moon, Europa, which is thought to have water, and could be able to sustain life for long periods of time. The bill also calls for a mission to its far moon, which has long been a priority for the scientific community.

Medical monitoring to study the effects space has on astronauts, including psychological conditions is included. NASA will also be allowed to provide healthcare to former astronauts for conditions resulting from their trips into space.

One of the most important provisions in the bill was a new rule that would provide sustained support to the agency, even during times of presidential transitions. NASA wants to avoid any disruptions that have occurred during presidential transitions, such as the Constellation program to return astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2020, which was canceled when former President Barack Obama took office.

“Past challenges to the continuity of such investments, particularly threats regarding the cancellation of authorized programs with bipartisan and bicameral support, have disrupted completion of major space systems,” the bill reads.

This bill marks the first NASA authorization to pass both houses of Congress since the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.

On Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who originally introduced the bill, said, “the future of the U.S. space program is now more secure and stable, and we have provided much-needed certainty to the missions of the International Space Station and Johnson Space Center.”

The bill is nearly identical to the one that already cleared the Senate last month, and will now go to President Donald Trump to be signed. </s> Is there life on Mars? There may well be by the 2030s after a bill giving NASA $20 billion for further exploration of the red planet was given the green light by Congress.

The bill, which will send $19.508billion to NASA, has been approved by both the Senate and the House and is now just waiting for Trump to give it his Presidential seal of approval, Space News reports.

The ambitious budget includes plans for humans to be “near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s,” meaning in under two decades the US is hoping to have conquered another planet.

The wording of the bill, according to Gizmodo, states that, “a human exploration roadmap should begin with low-Earth orbit, then address in greater detail progress beyond low-Earth orbit to cis-lunar space, and then address future missions aimed at human arrival and activities near and then on the surface of Mars.”

Mars isn’t the only planet in the Solar System on NASA’s hit list. There’s also a plan to send a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

This appears to be all part of their wider objective of expanding “permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit”.

They also want to establish “a thriving space economy in the 21st Century.”

It’s not completely clear what this would consist of – a Trump Tower on the moon?

It’s the first time a NASA authorization bill has been passed by both houses in over six year, the last being in 2010, but it’s comforting to know Congress is looking for an alternative for earth.

The ambitious plans were approved six months after the Schiaparelli Mars Lander touched down on the red planet in October 2016.

The mission, run by NASA’s rivals the European Space Agency, saw a probe land on the planet in a bid to search for signs of life. </s> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — On a personal quest to settle Mars, SpaceX founder Elon Musk envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to the red planet well within the next century, “Battlestar Galactica” style.

Musk outlined his zealous plan Tuesday to establish a self-sustaining city on Mars, complete with iron foundries and even pizzerias. He wants to make humans a multiplanetary species, and says the best way to do that is to colonize the red planet.

“I think Earth will be a good place for a long time, but the probable lifespan of human civilization will be much greater if we’re a multiplanetary species,” he said.

Musk, who also runs electric car maker Tesla Motors, received a wildly warm reception at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. Many in the crowd were avid space buffs.

For now, the aerospace company he founded in 2002 is focusing on satellite deliveries, as well as space station cargo runs for NASA and a future crew capsule for U.S. astronauts. Its Falcon rocket, though, is grounded for the second time in a year because of devastating accidents.

During his address, Musk did not mention the Sept. 1 launch pad explosion that destroyed a Falcon rocket and its satellite.

Instead, he noted that SpaceX already has begun work on the Mars Colonial fleet, recently test-firing a powerful new rocket engine named Raptor. The system ultimately could take people to the moons of Jupiter and beyond, he said.

Musk said it would be a “super-exciting” adventure to Mars but also dangerous, at least for the first few trips. His goal is to get the price down so anyone could afford to go, with a ticket costing no more than a house on Earth. He’s shooting for 1 million Martians.

Would he go, someone asked? Perhaps ultimately, but it would depend on whether he had a good succession plan in place. As for being the first Martian, the risk of fatalities will be high — “there’s just no way around it” — and he wants to see his five young sons grow up.

“It would be basically, are you prepared to die? If that’s OK, then you’re a candidate for going,” he told the audience.

In April, Musk announced plans to send an unmanned Dragon capsule to land on Mars as early as 2018. NASA is offering technical support, but no money. The space agency has its own program to get astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, using its own hardware.

Musk invited industry to join the Mars effort, which will represent a $10 billion investment. SpaceX currently is spending a few tens of millions of dollars on the enterprise, and the amount will soon grow, he said.

Musk described in detail his plans to launch a monster-size rocket — larger than even NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket — from the same launch pad at Kennedy Space Center from which the Apollo astronauts departed for the lunar surface in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The first-stage boosters would return to land vertically — just like his Falcon rocket boosters do now. Reusability, in fact, is essential to any plan for getting humans to Mars, as is refilling fuel tanks in Earth orbit and creating rocket fuel at Mars for return trips, he said.

The rocket would hoist a spaceship big enough to carry 100 to 200 people to Mars, a trip lasting several months, quicker with nuclear propulsion. Musk promised no one would be stuck there; spaceships would return regularly, and “you get a free return trip if you want.”

“Ultimately what I’m trying to achieve here is to make Mars seem possible, make it seem as though it’s something that we can do in our lifetimes,” he said. </s> Older European and U.S. spacecraft already in orbit relayed data of the lander's six-minute descent. Then transmission stopped, leaving questions over what state the disc-shaped 1,272-pound Schiaparelli probe was in.

"It is clear that these are not good signs," said Paolo Ferri, the European Space Agency's head of mission operations.

However, the primary part of the mission, bringing the lander's mothership into orbit around Mars to search for signs of life, was a success, the agency said.

"To fly to Mars is a very big challenge. To fly and be in safe orbit is a very big challenge," ESA Director General Jan Woerner said at ESA's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt.

Schiaparelli, which is testing technologies for a rover due to follow in 2020, represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on the red planet. Britain's Beagle 2 was ejected from the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003 but never made contact after failing to deploy its solar panels on landing.

At the time it was dubbed "a heroic failure."

ESA said more information about Schiaparelli should be available on Thursday, when scientists have had a chance to analyze data from the orbiting craft.

"Cross your fingers, we still have hope," Woerner said on Wednesday.

Landing on Mars, currently some 35 million miles away from its nearest planetary neighbor Earth, is a notoriously difficult task that has thwarted most efforts by Russia and given U.S. space agency NASA trouble as well.

The planet's hostile environment has not detracted from its allure, with President Barack Obama recently highlighting his pledge to send people to the surface by the 2030s.

"With this mission we're laying the foundation for going there," astronaut Alexander Gerst, who is set to become the first German commander of the International Space Station in 2018, told Reuters TV.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is developing a massive rocket and capsule to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonizing the planet, and the U.S. entrepreneur has said he would like to launch the first crew as early as 2024.

The primary goal of ExoMars, the European-Russian program that launched Schiaparelli, is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars.

The spacecraft on which the lander traveled, Trace Gas Orbiter, carries an atmospheric probe to study trace gases such as methane around the planet.

Scientists believe that methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life, could stem from micro-organisms that either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the planet's surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive.

"If there is life in our solar system beyond Earth, then Mars is the most interesting planet," ESA's Woerner told Reuters TV.

The second part of the ExoMars mission, delayed to 2020 from 2018, will deliver a European rover to Mars. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet's surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.

The ExoMars 2016 mission is led by the European Space Agency, with Russia's Roscosmos supplying the launcher and two of the four scientific instruments on the trace gas orbiter. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales and Finmeccanica.

The cost of the ExoMars mission to ESA, including the second part due in 2020, is expected to be about $1.4 billion. Russia's contribution comes on top of that. </s> DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space lander reached Mars on Wednesday in what scientists hope will mark a major milestone in exploration of the red planet, but whether it touched down on the surface in good health was far from certain.

Older European and U.S. spacecraft already in orbit relayed data of the lander's six-minute descent. Then transmission stopped, leaving questions over what state the disc-shaped 1,272 lb Schiaparelli probe was in.

"It is clear that these are not good signs," said Paolo Ferri, the European Space Agency's (ESA) head of mission operations.

However, the primary part of the mission, bringing the lander's mothership into orbit around Mars to search for signs of life, was a success, the agency said.

"To fly to Mars is a very big challenge. To fly and be in safe orbit is a very big challenge," ESA Director General Jan Woerner said at ESA's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

Schiaparelli, which is testing technologies for a rover due to follow in 2020, represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on the red planet. Britain's Beagle 2 was ejected from the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003 but never made contact after failing to deploy its solar panels on landing.

At the time it was dubbed "a heroic failure."

ESA said more information about Schiaparelli should be available on Thursday, when scientists have had a chance to analyze data from the orbiting craft.

"Cross your fingers, we still have hope," Woerner said on Wednesday. </s> The search for life on Mars took a giant leap on Wednesday when a space lander touched down on the red planet in Europe’s first attempt to land a craft there since the Beagle 2’s “heroic failure” more than a decade ago.

The disc-shaped 577-kg (1,272 lb) Schiaparelli lander, which is testing technologies for a rover due to follow in 2020, landed on Mars after a risky descent, but scientists are still waiting to find out what shape it is in.

During the six minutes descent to the surface, it used a parachute and thrusters to slow from a speed of nearly 21,000 km (13,000 miles) per hour.

“We have to wait a little bit to see what happens with the test lander. But this (mission) is already a success so far,” European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Jan Woerner said at ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

The lander is named for Giovanni Schiaparelli, the Italian astronomer who in 1877 began mapping the topography of Mars, extending study of what are now known as the planet’s canals, a mistranslation of the Italian word canali, or channels.

“Mars has already inspired people for centuries,” ESA’s Woerner told Reuters TV.

Schiaparelli is part of the European-Russian ExoMars program, which will search for signs of past and present life on Mars and represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on the red planet. Britain’s Beagle 2 was ejected from the Mars Express spacecraft in 2003 but never made contact after failing to deploy its solar panels upon landing.

At the time it was dubbed “a heroic failure.”

Landing on Mars, Earth’s neighbor some 35 million miles (56 million km) away, is a notoriously difficult task that has bedeviled most Russian efforts and given NASA trouble as well.

A seemingly hostile environment on Mars has not detracted from its allure, with U.S. President Barack Obama recently highlighting his pledge to send people to the planet by the 2030s.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX is developing a massive rocket and capsule to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonizing the planet, with Musk saying he would like to launch the first crew as early as 2024.

The primary goal of ExoMars is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. The spacecraft on which the Schiaparelli lander traveled to Mars, Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), carries an atmospheric probe to study trace gases such as methane around the planet.

Scientists believe that methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life, could stem from micro-organisms that either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the planet’s surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive.

“If there is life in our solar system beyond Earth, then Mars is the most interesting planet,” ESA’s Woerner said.

The second part of the ExoMars mission, delayed to 2020 from 2018, will deliver a European rover to the surface of Mars. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet’s surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.

The ExoMars 2016 mission is led by the European Space Agency (ESA), with Russia’s Roscosmos supplying the launcher and two of the four scientific instruments on the trace gas orbiter. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales and Finmeccanica.

The cost of the ExoMars mission to ESA, including the second part due in 2020, is expected to be about 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). Russia’s contribution comes on top of that. </s> For the first time in more than 6 years, both chambers of Congress passed a bill that approves funding for NASA and gives the space agency new mandates.

The NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 is a bill the Senate and House collaborated on for months, and it appropriates $19.508 billion to the space agency. (NASA received $19.3 billion in 2016, or 0.5% of the total federal budget.)

When the Senate brought the bill before the House of Representatives for a vote on March 7, "no members spoke against the bill" and it passed, according to Jeff Foust at Space News.

The document asks NASA to create a roadmap for getting humans "near or on the surface of Mars in the 2030s." It also calls on the space agency to continue developing the Space Launch System (SLS) — a behemoth rocket — and the Orion space capsule in order to eventually go to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Now it's up to President Donald J. Trump to sign the bill into law — or veto it.

Business Insider did not immediately receive a response from Trump administration officials about the president's plans for the new bill.

However, its passage seems likely.

President Trump has expressed support for a crewed exploration of Mars, and in his inauguration speech, he said he's "ready to unlock the mysteries of space." Administration officials, meanwhile, have said they want NASA to return to the moon in the 2020s but also proposed to end the space agency's 58-year mandate to study the Earth and its climate — details the bill conveniently leaves out.

Trump also maintains a relatively tight collaboration with the Republican-controlled legislative branch.

The American Astronomical Society has a convenient breakdown of the $19.508 billion in the bill, including funding for human space exploration, space station operations, science, and more.

Here are some notable titles, articles, and sections of the 146-page document:
• "Assuring Core Capabilities For Exploration" — calls for several missions: an uncrewed launch of SLS and Orion in 2018, followed by a crewed mission to the moon in 2021, and further trips to the moon and Mars after that date
• "Journey to Mars" — asks NASA for a roadmap to send people to Mars by 2033; also steers the space agency away from pursuing the Asteroid Redirect Mission (a plan to capture an asteroid, tow it into orbit around Earth, and have astronauts explore the space rock)
• "Human Space Flight And Exploration Goals And Objectives" — says it's the mission of NASA to "to expand permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit"
• "Aeronautics" — calls on NASA to be a leader in aviation and hypersonic aircraft research; also asks the space agency to look into supersonic aircraft research that would "open new global markets and enable new transportation capabilities"
• "Mars 2020 rover" — Congress backs up NASA's plan to use the car-sized rover to "help determine whether life previously existed on that planet"
• "Europa" — approves of NASA's plan to send a probe to Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa, which may have a warm subsurface ocean (and possibly host alien life)
• "Congressional declaration of policy and purpose" — amends previous laws to make it part of NASA's mission to "search for life's origin, evolution, distribution, and future in the universe"
• "Extrasolar planet exploration strategy" — asks NASA to explain how it will use the James Webb Space Telescope and other instruments to hunt for exoplanets
• "Near-Earth objects" — asks NASA to accelerate its program to find killer asteroids in space
• "Radioisotope power systems" — implores NASA to deliver a report on how it plans to make plutonium-238 — an exceedingly rare nuclear fuel for deep-space robots — and detail what its nuclear-powered exploration plans are </s> FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A Mars lander left its mothership on Sunday after a seven-month journey from Earth and headed toward the red planet’s surface to test technologies for Europe’s planned first Mars rover, which will search for signs of past and present life.

The disc-shaped 577-kilogramme (1,272 lb) Schiaparelli lander separated from the spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) at 1442 GMT (10:42 a.m. EDT) as expected, starting a three-day descent to the surface.

Signals received from TGO, which is to orbit Mars and sniff out gases around the planet, did not at first contain data on the lander’s onboard status, but the European Space Agency (ESA) later said the link with the craft had been restored.

“On the side of (Schiaparelli) I would say that the separation was a success,” Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at ESA, told Reuters TV at ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, after it had been confirmed that the lander had split from the TGO.

Schiaparelli, part of the European-Russian ExoMars program, represents only the second European attempt to land a craft on Mars, after a failed mission by Britain’s Beagle 2 in 2003.

Landing on Mars, Earth’s neighbor some 35 million miles (56 million km) away, is a notoriously difficult task that has bedevilled most Russian efforts and given NASA trouble as well.

But a seemingly hostile environment has not detracted from the allure of Mars, with U.S. President Barack Obama recently highlighting his pledge to send people to the planet by the 2030s.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is developing a massive rocket and capsule to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars with the ultimate goal of colonizing the planet, with Musk saying he would like to launch the first crew as early as 2024.

The primary goal of ExoMars is to find out whether life has ever existed on Mars. The current spacecraft, TGO, carries an atmospheric probe to study trace gases such as methane around the planet.

Scientists believe that methane, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life, could stem from micro-organisms that either became extinct millions of years ago and left gas frozen below the planet’s surface, or that some methane-producing organisms still survive.

Schiaparelli will reach the atmosphere of Mars on Wednesday, and will use a parachute and thrusters to slow its descent from a speed of nearly 21,000 kilometers per hour before touching down on the planet’s surface. Entry, descent and landing will take less than six minutes.

The second part of the ExoMars mission, delayed to 2020 from 2018, will deliver a European rover to the surface of Mars. It will be the first with the ability to both move across the planet’s surface and drill into the ground to collect and analyze samples.

Slideshow (4 Images)

The ExoMars 2016 mission is led by the European Space Agency (ESA), with Russia’s Roscosmos supplying the launcher and two of the four scientific instruments on the trace gas orbiter. The prime contractor is Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales and Finmeccanica.

The cost of the ExoMars mission to ESA, including the second part due in 2020, is expected to be about 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). Russia’s contribution comes on top of that.

($1 = 0.9060 euros)
Mars One, a private Dutch organization that had claimed it would send humans on a one-way trip to Mars starting in 2024, releases a statement saying it has been declared bankrupt.