One-Way Trip to Mars Planned

This may come as a shock to you but there is actually a nonprofit outfit in the Netherlands that aims to land four people on Mars in a one-way mission in 2025. Yep, not NASA, not the European Space Agency, not the Russians or the Chinese, but Netherlands-based Mars One. And they're going to fund the project by selling off the naming of each of the 500,000 unnamed craters currently cataloged on Mars to the general public for a small fee. Later on, they also hope to solicit applications for other of the red planet's features, such as mountains and canyons.

The group also plans to make more money by staging a global media event around the entire colonization project, from astronaut selection to the pioneers' life on Mars, by  using a new "people's map of Mars" being developed by the space-funding company Uwingu.

"We're very enthusiastic about the partnership with Uwingu," Mars One CEO and co-founder Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. "Like Mars One, Uwingu gives everyone around the world the opportunity to participate in space exploration. The name you choose will go down in history, traveling on board our 2018 mission lander and will be used by our future astronauts. What an amazing opportunity!"

Mars One's planned 2018 mission aims to launch a robotic lander and orbiter toward the Red Planet to demonstrate some of the technologies required for human missions. Further unmanned efforts will blast off in 2020 and 2022 to help prepare for the arrival of people, who are slated to touch down in 2025 as the vanguard of a permanent Mars colony.

The Mars crater-naming project could generate more than $10 million if people snap up all 500,000 craters, officials said. (Prices start at $5 for the smallest craters and go up as crater size increases). Anyone who contributes to the project will know that the name that they put down is going to Mars.