---
title: "Scientists Are Planning a 1,000 Year Trip to Another Planet"
description: "A team of scientists wants to colonize and populate another world on an exoplanet to protect humanity from Earth's eventualy demise or destruction."
date: "2019-12-10"
modified: "2019-12-10"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski.md"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/1000-year-trip-colonize-another-planet"
categories:
  - "Off-World"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "space"
  - "space colonization"
  - "the digest"
---

# Scientists Are Planning a 1,000 Year Trip to Another Planet

![A team of scientists wants to colonize and populate another world to protect humanity from Earth's eventualy demise or destruction.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/scientists-planning-1000-year-trip-another-planet.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: SpaceX/Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Long Shot

In a bid to protect humanity in case Earth becomes uninhabitable, a team of scientists is trying to pull together a bold plan to colonize a distant exoplanet.

It's a long shot in every sense of the word. Scientists from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies [told *OneZero*](<https://onezero.medium.com/scientists-are-contemplating-a-1-000-year-space-mission-to-save-humanity-70882a0d6e47>) that the plan to send a crew to a potentially-habitable exoplanet in another solar system — [perhaps Proxima Centauri B](<https://futurism.com/proxima-b-blasted-radiation.md>) — could take centuries or millennia. That means entire generations would be born and die during the journey.

## Technically Possible

The challenges facing such a mission are so myriad, however, that the scientists' comments sound a bit flip.

"There's no principal obstacle from a physics perspective," executive director Andreas Hein told *OneZero*. "There are a lot of challenges, but no fundamental principle of physics is violated."

## Long List

Among those challenges is figuring out how to sustain human life on such a long journey through space. Based on current research, even a trip to Mars is ill-advised because scientists haven't yet figured out an effective way to shield astronauts from [deadly cosmic radiation](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/radiation-exposure-mars.md>), and the [medical issues](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/nasa-research-astronauts-clots-bizarre-blood-flow.md>) caused by spending time in space are still poorly understood.

And that's assuming that an exoplanet will [actually be hospitable](<https://futurism.com/astronomers-search-alien-life.md>) once people get there, speaking nothing of whether any of those space-born generations will change their mind about the mission they were assigned at birth.

**READ MORE:** [Scientists Are Contemplating a 1,000-Year Space Mission to Save Humanity](<https://onezero.medium.com/scientists-are-contemplating-a-1-000-year-space-mission-to-save-humanity-70882a0d6e47>) \[*OneZero*\]

**More on space colonization:** *[Reality Check: IT Would Take Thousands of Years to Colonize Mars](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/thousands-years-colonize-mars.md>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)

## More

- [More Study Is Needed on Reproduction in Space If We Want to Colonize Mars](<https://futurism.com/study-needed-reproduction-space-colonize-mars.md>)
- [Future Mars Colonists Could Fly Rockets They 3D Printed Right on the Red Planet](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/mars-colonists-3d-print-rocket.md>)
- [Should We Try to Colonize Other Worlds or Stay and Fix Earth?](<https://futurism.com/why-we-shouldnt-colonize-exoplanets.md>)
- [Scientists Claim to Find First-Ever Planet in Another Galaxy](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/first-planet-another-galaxy.md>)
- [Scientists Reveal Easy Three-Step Plan to Terraform Mars](<https://futurism.com/three-step-plan-terraform-mars.md>)
- [One Scientist Has a Plan to Send the Building Blocks of Life to Distant Exoplanets](<https://futurism.com/scientist-plan-send-building-blocks-life-distant-exoplanets.md>)
- [NASA Is Planning the First-Ever Interstellar Mission](<https://futurism.com/nasa-planning-first-ever-interstellar-mission.md>)
- [Here’s What We Need to do If We Want to Colonize the Milky Way](<https://futurism.com/heres-what-we-need-to-do-if-we-want-to-colonize-the-milky-way.md>)