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Sacramento Woman One Step Closer To One-Way Trip To Mars

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — A local mom is one step closer to making a giant leap to live on Mars.

CBS13 first told you about Stephanie Buck's plans to leave her family and Earth forever on a one-way trip to Mars.

She beat out 200,000 people from around the world, and now Buck is one of 700 who could be the first to call Mars home.

It will be simple things like a cup of coffee that she'll miss if she's picked to go to a place no man or woman has gone before.

"A lot of people dropped out, for personal reasons or medical," she said.

And plenty dropped out because it's one terrifying idea. The plan for the Mars One mission is to start sending humans on a one-way trip to the red planet in 10 years. They will then try to colonize the unforgiving planet, with temperatures as low as -200 degrees.

Buck passed her physical and is now one of the 700 left in the running. Eventually the group of interplanetary travelers will be whittled down to four.

REPORTER: It's a cold and lonely planet; what if you die up there?

BUCK: Well, we would die up there eventually. It's not like we're coming back. But someone has to do it.

She says her younger daughters have been supportive, but not everyone has. She's received several nasty emails after her story ran on CBS13 earlier this month.

"They just don't think that I should that I should do it," she said. "I have children."

Buck says while she's leaving her family for good on Earth, her children will be grown adults in a decade and able to support themselves.

She says she's willing to go to Mars in part for her daughters, trying to be part of a future of the human race.

"We're kind of running out of space here to do it,"she said, "and it's just the next logical place to go."

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