Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, has called for space exploration efforts to be concentrated on Mars with a view to establishing a colony.

Discussing space exploration at the Science Museum in London this weekend, Aldrin (above) said self-sufficiency should be the ultimate goal of a human outpost on the red planet. "Is there anything bigger that humans could do on Earth than to leave and begin to occupy?" he asked.

Reaching Mars would be "the easy part", he said, predicting mankind could set foot on the planet by 2040. The challenge would be sustaining a colony, which would require shuttles between Mars and the Earth until it became self-sufficient.

Nor would it be difficult to recruit volunteers to set up a permanent settlement on Mars, he said, although the long-term psychological impact could present problems. "I can also see things getting a little tough and they regret the decision and their functioning going down and that being disruptive to people," he said.

The former Apollo astronaut, who was part of the first moon landing in 1969, has long been an advocate of establishing a human settlement on the red planet. In 2013, he wrote a column for the New York Times in which he envisioned a successful colony there, making human beings a "two-planet species".

Dozens of proposals for a crewed mission to Mars have been proposed since the inception of space exploration, but the risk and expense prevented any serious undertaking until the development of Nasa's Orion spacecraft, which was announced in 2011. The ship made its first unmanned test flight into the Earth's orbit in 2014 and if all goes to plan, could take astronauts to Mars by 2035.

TAGS: Space, Nasa