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.
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.