2 Dutch candidates selected for Mars 1 project

Two Dutch candidates emerged winners in the second selection round for a single trip to Mars that would take place in 2025, Dutch media reported Tuesday. A total of 1,058 individuals were selected for the second round of Mars One, a Dutch non-profit project with the aim to establish a permanent settlement on Mars. The names of the two Dutch still in the race for participation were not disclosed on the website of Mars One. Mars One's final goal is to land its astronauts in 2024 and 2025 for a televised reality on the Red Planet that is on average some 230 million kilometers away from the Earth. The project faces many technical, ethical and financial pitfalls and has already garnered plenty of skeptics from becoming a reality after all. But that does not seem to bother the 200,000 applicants who initially signed up for the mission. "For the applicants who were not selected in this round, there is still a chance they could reapply at a later date, which has not yet been determined,"founder Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. According to Lansdorp, the selected participants will be subjected to the next several selection phases in 2014 and 2015 "which will include rigorous simulations, many in team settings, with focus on testing the physical and emotional capabilities of the remaining candidates,"Lansdorp added. However, more details of the 2014 selection phases have not been agreed upon "due to ongoing negotiations with media companies for the rights to televise the selection processes," Lansdorp said.