‘We’ll Have Bases On The Moon By 2030’: The South African Space Scientist On The Mission Of A Lifetime

For billions of years, Planet Earth has been perceived as humanity’s only home in the solar system. Now, scientists are working towards a multi-dimensional future.

In the world of interplanetary missions, Mars is the number one destination. Traces of waterways and seasonal patterns have it being probed for future human habitation.

When compared to the West, Africa’s involvement in the Mars conversation appears minimal.

Enter the physicist raising the region’s voice to ensure it doesn’t get left behind, figuratively and literally.

“I’ve dreamed of exploring worlds beyond Earth since I was about four years old,” Dr Adriana Marais, Author of Out of This World and into the Next: Notes from a Physicist on Space Exploration, tells FORBES AFRICA.

When Marais graduated with her PhD in Quantum Biology from South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2014, she was destined for space exploration, but would agree that her career has been full of pinch-me moments.

A celestial advocate steered by Africanism, Marais ponders many things, but never falters in her unrelenting desire to better Africa’s stake in space.

Her concerns are warranted; global domination has the region playing catch-up.

“The continent has had no official participation in a decades-long international program of human habitation in Earth orbit and has led no space exploration mission to date,” she adds, before pointing out that while Africa represents around 20% of the global population, it owns less than 1% of the world’s satellites.

When it comes to African research on Mars, Marais isn’t waiting around; her impatience perhaps augmented by the magnitude of the occasion.

“For the first time in four billion years of life on Earth, we are expanding beyond our home planet,” notes the scientist with the letters M-A-R-S in her surname. Before life on Mars, rigorous research has to justify its compatibility, which brings Marais to the moon.

In 2017, she joined the non-profit, Foundation for Space Development Africa (FSDA)—founded by fellow South African Dr Carla Sharpe Mitchell in 2009—as a Director, overseeing one of the continent’s most ambitious projects: Africa2Moon.

On track to become the first all-African space exploration mission, Africa2Moon is an African-designed and built low-frequency radio telescope with the objective of demonstrating “new technology, do first-time science and inspire the next generation of African innovators and dreamers”, as noted by Marais.

The first lunar instrument of its kind, it incorporates three antennas or BALLS (Bounced African Low Lunar Spheres), which work together to observe low-frequency radio signals coming from space.

It’s an African-centric vision that has secured global backing. In September 2024, FSDA became a member of China’s International Lunar Research Station partner network. Then, in April 2025, Africa2Moon was selected as an international payload to be deployed at the lunar south pole by China’s Chang’e-8 mission, scheduled for 2029.

Marais reports that a solo launch would have cost around R1.3 billion ($77 million).

With a lift-off date all but set, Marais is tasked with ensuring the BALLS can withstand “one of the harshest environments in the solar system”, where temperatures drop below negative 200 degrees Celsius.

“If all goes to plan, we’ll have bases on the Moon by 2030 and potentially, Chinese taikonauts on Mars by 2033,” Marais predicts.

Offering clarity on what lunar south pole exploration offers, she says: “While humanity has not yet landed technology at this location, the lunar south pole is an important place to collect data because this is where the first permanent off-world research bases are to be established in the coming years due to the presence of water ice in the permanently shadowed craters there.”

By dissecting low-frequency signals otherwise unobservable from Earth’s surface (because of interference with our atmosphere), “lunar radio astronomy promises to shed light on the earliest history of the Universe and as yet unexplored cosmic phenomena, making it one of the last frontiers of observational astronomy”.

If all goes accordingly, Africa2Moon will be the first fully-successful radio astronomy experiment performed from the surface of the moon, following several failed attempts by global powers.

Harnessing the collaborative efforts of African thinkers, several expert volunteers are contributing to FSDA’s lunar efforts, including individuals from the South African National Space Agency, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory, as well as institutions in Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, and across the continent, Marais says.

Meanwhile, Stellenbosch University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, alongside Durban-based Aerospace Systems Research Institute, Petrawell, recently built the components of the structural and functional models to be assembled and delivered to the Chang’e-8 team for testing in April 2026.

With regional collaboration central to Africa2Moon’s productivity, success would mark a rare African triumph in space. This is a clear signal that the continent possesses the skillset and faculties to compete on a global scale.

That’s not to say Africa isn’t limited in infrastructure and human capital, because it is, but it would surely show investors the acumen on offer, the kind of intellectual pedigree that could deliver substantial returns in expanding markets.

Supporting the continent’s maturity, Africa2Moon is designed so African space research can thrive.

“The BALLS will serve as a pathfinder for future lunar technologies and radio astronomy experiments,” Marais shares, adding that it will also become a “technology demonstrator for the full Africa2Moon mission, aiming to deploy 55 antennas on the far side of the Moon, one for each nation in Africa, in a future mission to the lunar far side”.

You can’t knock Marais’ patriotic spirit, nor can you dispute her pursuit of Mars.

“Living on more than one planet is a necessary first step to becoming a space-faring civilization,” Marais explains.

“Our journeys into the unknown teach us not only more about the world we live in, but importantly also more about ourselves.”

Following the establishment of Proudly Human in June 2019, the Off-World Project was born.

Through this, she attempts to tame the extremes of cosmic conditions. “We do a series of community experiments in some of the harshest environments on the planet in preparation for extreme conditions on Earth and beyond,” Marais outlines.

Earth is home to various otherworldly locations, providing Off-World Project the testing grounds it needs.

They’ve conducted tests in the Namibian desert, “the oldest and one of the driest on Earth”, to optimize water management, utilized undersea research stations to simulate a non-breathable outside environment, and braved the Antarctic winter to explore energy management.

Coinciding with efforts to optimize data for interplanetary purposes, she hopes Proudly Human can establish an African astronaut training program to usher in a new guard of expertise–perhaps the next Dr Marais?

During an era she labels as a challenging and profound period of transformation for humanity, Marais offers hope.

“We are working to ensure that billions of young people in Africa and around the world have not only a seat at the table, but also, if they desire, on the spacecraft that will enable us to expand our world and our perspective beyond our home planet Earth.”

Something once deemed unreachable is now within touching distance. Mars could be the next planet civilization calls home, and there’s a good chance that, if this is the case, Marais will have helped open the door for Africa.