A mission is underway to send a small colony of Earthlings to live on the Red Planet; the thing is they can never come back.

The Mars One venture has selected the Martin and Surrey Satellite Technology to work on important hardware concepts in hopes on sending a practice lander to Mars in 2018, NBC News reported.

"This will be the first private mission to Mars, and Lockheed Martin is very excited to have been contracted by Mars One," Ed Sedivy, chief engineer for civil space at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said in a statement, NBC reported. "This is an ambitious project, and we're already working on the mission concept study, starting with the proven design of Phoenix."

If the mission goes well the first people could land on Mars by 2025. Over 200,000 have applied to be Mars pioneers, despite the fact that it will be their permanent home, CNN reported.

The unmanned lander is the most important and most difficult step of actually getting humans to Mars," Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp, said in the news release, CNN reported.

Mars One's original goal was to have a colony on Mars by 2023, but the project had to be stalled.

Getting a team on Mars would be expensive, so Mars One hopes to turn the process into a reality television show and gain media attention, NBC reported.

The first human mission to Mars is expected to cost around $6 billion, all following missions would cost about $4 billion.

"We have very good discussions with sponsors and partners going on," Lansdorp said in an email to NBC News. "We have noticed a big positive change in the tone of the discussions since we started talking about the very concrete 2018 lander. We're in advanced negotiations with a major studio for an overall deal for film and television properties."

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