Alyssa Carson could have been a regular 18-year-old girl, what makes her special is that she could be the first human to set foot on Mars.
How old were you when you received your driving license? NASA’s first choice for mission Mars 18-years-old Alyssa Carson was just 16 when she received her official certification of an Astronaut.
- Alyssa Carson was just three-year-old when she started dreaming about being an astronaut.
- At 16 she graduated from the Advanced Space Academy becoming the youngest person ever to do so.
- She is the youngest person to have completed all of NASA’s seven Space Camps and received the certification in applied astronautics.

- She was officially certified to do a suborbital research flight and venture into space even before receiving her driver’s permit.
- She is currently training with Project PoSSUM, a private citizen science organization which works in developing the Final Frontier Space Suit Design, for a suborbital flight into the highest layer of the atmosphere – the mesosphere.
- Her training includes microgravity flights with spacesuits, water survival training with spacesuits to help with the development, decompression training, and simulation of different G-forces in aeroplanes.
- As for the when and how of her trip to the Red Planet, NASA has planned to launch its mission to Mars by 2030.
“Always follow your dream and don’t let anyone take it from you.”
Alyssa Carson
- It will be a 40-million-mile trip with a high risk of not making it back to Earth and focus on searching for lifeforms, understanding the surface and the planet’s evolution, and preparing for potential future human colonization.
- The fearless teenage astronaut believes that a mission to Mars and all the benefits we can get from it, outweigh any of the risks even it means floating

