Look out Mars! A future colony is expected to head out to the Red Planet in 2024

A new study about the potential of sending humans to live on Mars for an extended amount of time has shown that there are still some major roadblocks; specifically, humans would likely begin to die within 68 days of arriving on the Red Planet.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed that oxygen levels would start to deplete after two months, and new technologies are still required before any attempts at colonization would be feasible.

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The five-person research team used data from Mars One, a Dutch-based organization that is behind a project to set up a permanent colony on Mars in 2024.

The group has a list of more than 1,000 people, taken from a starting pool of 200,000 applicants, but only 24 will be selected for the mission-a permanent move to Mars-which is being funded in part by a reality television show.

However, the mission is impossible with current technology.

"The first crew fatality would occur approximately 68 days into the mission," the 35-page report said after using mathematical formulas on the oxygen, food and technology requirements.

Plants required to feed the colony would produce "unsafe" levels of oxygen.

"Some form of oxygen removal system is required, a technology that has not yet been developed for space flight," the study concluded.

Another major limiting factor is having replacement parts shipped to keep the $4.5 billion colony going.

The CEO and co-founder of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp agreed that sending replacement parts would be a major hurdle.

"The major challenge of Mars One is keeping everything up and running," he said in an interview with Popular Science magazine.

Lansdorp does not agree with the statement that oxygen removing technology is not ready.

"While oxygen removal has never been done in space, I disagree that the technology is not mostly ready to go to Mars," he said.

"Of course, the actual apparatus that we will take to Mars still needs to be designed and tested extensively, but the technology is already there."

The distance between Mars and Earth changes constantly, but it remains roughly 34 million miles away from the Earth, and any trip would take at least seven months.

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