"We could be on Mars in ten years," announced Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society speaking at the seminar called "Think Mars" being held here at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Taking a more prudent approach, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said it could happen in 2014 or 2020.

But already the wheels are in motion on earth for exploration and even tourist voyages to the deserted red planet.

Zubrin, a former engineer at the US space firm Lockheed Martin, expects to launch his first space vessel to Mars as soon as 2005.

Once landed, the craft will use the carbonic gas in the atmosphere to produce an oxidant necessary for the release of a capsule which will bring astronauts back to Earth.

"The use of local resources not only makes the mission cheap, it makes it effective," Zubrin said. And two years later in 2007, the first astronaut team will return to Mars, he added.

NASA expects to launch its first craft to Mars in 2016, including a similar oxidant producing machine and a vessel for astronauts to return to earth in.

A first team will be rocketed up to space in 2018 and another will follow two years later. Each trip will last between four and five months, and the astronauts will stay on the red planet for a year and a half, NASA said.

One ionic motor prototype permitting such a trip has already launched the Deep Space One spacecraft, but a more powerful model would be needed to enable the Mars mission.

Astronautical engineer Franklin Chang-Diaz, who created the first model, said "there is no technical problem" for making such a powerful ionic motor.

At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, teams already are training in a cramped vessel where they will be expected to live for several weeks during their space voyage. The craft recycles water and used oxygen.

But getting to the red planet will be only half the battle for the astronauts, who also will have to learn how to work on Mars' environment.

Researchers have been taking turns going to the Haughton impact crater on Devon Island in the Arctic each summer to work on similar materials and environments they may encounter on Mars.

The crater, with a deserted, rocky, permafrost surface similar to the one on the red planet allows teams access to "all things relevant to research on Mars," said Pascal Lee, an official with the program from NASA's Ames Research Center in California.

Next summer, a research team sponsored by both NASA and the Mars Society is expected to live there in the same capsule which Zubrin expects to use for his expedition to the planet.

Human expeditions to Mars will be very costly in the years to come and international private-public collaboration to finance these trips will be a necessary step for the numerous trips, experts agree.

"The private sector needs to lead ... but the government must participate," said Buzz Aldrin, former astronaut and the second man in the world to set foot on the moon.

As the director of Starcraft Enterprises, Aldrin hopes to develop space trips for anyone. "Space tourism is the key to opening up the space frontier," he added.

Aldrin plans to travel to the red planet aboard the Mars Cycler vessel in 2015 or 2020.

Zubrin added that "human race will eventually terraform Mars" making the desert-like planet habitable for humans.

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