Plans for first sustainable city on Mars unveiled

With plans for the first 'Martian sustainable city' ready to go, it's now just a question of time before humans live on Mars.

The new design overall contains five cities - the capital is called Nüwa. The vertical city has homes, offices and green spaces, all built into the side of a cliff to protect inhabitants from atmospheric pressure and radiation, Euronews reports.

The oxygen is largely produced by plants, food is 90 per cent plant-based and the energy comes from solar panels.

Mars is half the size of Earth. But how would we get there? Every two years there are a couple of weeks when the planet is the closest to Earth, so the trip would only take six months to get there.

However, the circumstances on the Red Planet are far from friendly. The atmospheric pressure is not suitable for humans and the radiation is lethal on the surface without any shelter.

"We had to do a lot of analysis based on computing and working with the scientists to try to understand what are the circumstances that we will face," says founder of architecture studio ABIBOO, Alfredo Muñoz, adding "we have to face challenges that are very specific to the conditions of Mars, one of them is gravity, which is only one-third of the gravity on Earth."