Two SAP employees want to be among the first to walk the rocky surface of Mars. Learn who they are and what drives them.
Who would want to leave Earth, our beautiful marbled blue sphere in space and the only planet in the universe that we are certain sustains our form of life?
Adriana Marais and Mikolaj Zielinski would, and if you talk to them, you will sense that the journey can’t start soon enough. If their dream of dreams comes true, in about a decade they’ll be twirling back flips in their spacecraft on the six-month, 200-million-kilometer journey to Mars, a bitter cold environment devoid of breathable oxygen, bombarded by deadly radiation, and covered by dust and rocks.
Adriana, head of Innovation for SAP Africa, and Mikolaj (Miko), senior developer for SAP Globalization Services, didn’t choose Mars – in a certain sense, it chose them.
Both have been selected from more than 200,000 applicants by the Mars One Project with the goal to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Although a lot can happen between now and when the next realistic launch window begins in 2031, Adriana and Miko are energized and unwavering in their hope that they may be among the first to walk the rocky surface of the Red Planet.
Click the button below to load the content from Youtube.
Join the “Mars Onboarding” Program
Spend a few days with Adriana and Miko and you’ll experience your own kind of intergalactic mindset change, a “Mars onboarding” program from which you will never fully disembark. You’ll learn that their Mars ambitions are a perfectly natural continuation of how they have lived their lives on Earth. It could be that a perfect space storm is brewing for both, by the merging of three factors: their own development, entrepreneurial interest in space exploration, and increased knowledge about our solar system.
And what does it say that two SAP employees are among the final 100 for a Mars project? It’s obvious that the company is an attractive employer to earthlings who think big, and who are permitted to follow their dreams beyond their daily jobs.
Adriana: “Inspire Humanity to View Earth Differently”
Adriana’s fascination with space exploration began as a small child: “I imagined getting in a rocket on a one-way trip to visit other planets and sending back word so others could join me”.
She says her decision to go for it was spontaneous and irreversible. “Justifying the decision was something that I did in retrospect,” she points out.
A theoretical physicist and researcher by training, Adriana has made her mark in a discipline called quantum biology, which studies systems of life at the atomic scale. The primary question any Mars expedition will try to answer is “Is there life, or was there life, on Mars and what kind of life is it?”
“There is evidence that Mars had oceans 4 billion years ago, and there may still be pockets of environmental conditions in underground lava tubes or caves that could still host life,” she says. Adriana wants to help uncover life or the fossilized remnants of life in what she calls the “most exciting project in the history of life on Earth”.
But the South African is driven by more than science. She believes the sustainable settlement of Mars could stimulate technological and societal changes that might create greater awareness for a more sustainable life back on Earth. According to Adriana: “The contribution I hope to make is to inspire people on Earth to view our planet differently and do more to protect it”.
Miko: “Contribute Where Adventure Meets Science”
Miko is a natural explorer and adventurist, resulting from an inner drive that has taken him to places on Earth few have ever seen or experienced, under conditions of extreme heat or cold.
“I’ve spent some of my best holidays roaming the summits of remote mountainous regions,” he recalls. In Mongolia, for example, Miko bought horses from a local farmer and trekked across the lonely steppe for three weeks in the burning heat. In 1999, “just for fun,” he cycled along the 1,300 kilometer Karakorum Highway from China to Pakistan at an average elevation of 4,500 meters. During the winter of 2002/2003, he participated in a climbing expedition to K2, the world’s second highest mountain.
“Some people are always curious about what is around the corner, beyond the horizon, and what is on the planet, and I am one of these people,” reflects Miko. Mars offers him a range of geographic thrills not seen on Earth, such as a 25-kilometer-high volcano and a canyon 4,000 kilometer long and 10 kilometer deep.
It’s easy to see how Miko’s contribution to the exploration of Mars would be a natural continuation of his earthly exploits: “The mission is so appealing because I will have fun exploring the planet, but at the same time contribute to new discoveries – not least the discovery of new life forms”.
Despite his many conquests, Miko has stayed humble. His adventurist nature has evolved to serve greater causes. “My most rewarding adventure so far was in support of a medical team trekking from village to village in the Himalayas, providing medical help to hundreds of people who had never seen a doctor,” he says.
Passion for a New Planet
In addition to qualities like curiosity and the ability to analyze and solve difficult problems, traits such as empathy, effective communication, and a sense of humor are widely viewed as essential to the success of a Mars mission. Humans will have to deal with inhospitable living conditions, isolation, and the likelihood of never returning to Earth, so the teams that don’t adapt to the challenges presented to them during isolation training will be weeded out.
Neither Adriana nor Miko are thinking about what they will do if they are not chosen for a Mars launch — too strong is their dream and too intense is their focus on their goal and particularly the final selection round planned for 2019.
“Since volunteering for the project, I live more than ever in the moment,” Adriana reveals, noting that no one knows how long they will live. “A ‘Plan B’ would only take my attention away from ‘Plan A,’” says Miko.
The pursuit of their dream appears to have changed their perspective on life altogether. Asked whether it matters if she will never return to Earth, Adriana says it’s not important on which planet you die, but how you have lived your life: “It’s our ideas which outlive us,” she says.
Miko is almost already waving to us from Mars: “After I decided to follow my goal, I gained a lot of distance to everything that was happening around me. I started to think on the scale of the solar system, and many other things didn’t matter anymore”.
Exploration is Inspiration
Both Adriana and Miko dedicate their time to speak at public events and in classrooms about Mars and the benefits of space exploration.
“Space really opens up our thinking and our imaginations to what can be possible when using creative thinking and technology,” says Adriana, who in 2018 gave a keynote at an SAP-sponsored event, “Women in Data Science”.
“This is a great opportunity to inspire children to follow an educational path in the STEM topics,” says Miko. “One of my proudest moments was when a student said he wanted to be like me and train to become an astronaut”.
Video by Natalie Hauck and Alexander Januschke, SAP Development Communications.