Aspiring Martians

After a brief detour into big philosophical questions — and the launch of our new Inside the Habitat series — Aspiring Martians returns to what it does best: real conversations with real people who are actively building their way toward Mars.
In this episode, Joe is joined by Thendral Kamal, an aeronautical and astronautical engineering student at Purdue University with a minor in political science, and a résumé that already spans aircraft structural engineering at Delta Air Lines, satellite sustainability work in Washington, D.C., undergraduate research in aerospace reliability and international relations, and published astrophysics research.
But this conversation goes far beyond credentials.
Joe and Thendral talk about her early love of planetariums and astronomy, the importance of family and community support, winning a high-school payload competition that helped crystallize her path toward space, and what it means to “create your own luck” through discipline, curiosity, and saying yes before you feel ready. They also explore how policy, engineering, and global cooperation intersect in space exploration — and why those intersections matter for future Martian settlements.
At its core, this episode is about preparation. About stacking skills. About believing that extraordinary futures are built through very ordinary, very intentional steps. And about Thendral’s long-term vision to one day become the first Indian woman to set foot on Mars.
This is what becoming an Aspiring Martian really looks like.

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A huge thank you to Thendral for joining metoday and sharing her story, to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, to Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, to Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project—even when I start thinking about what it means to be unreachable.

Inside the Habitat is a brand new series from Aspiring Martians that takes listeners behind the scenes of the analog simulations shaping humanity’s future on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. On the first Tuesday of every month, we will explore the many habitats scattered across deserts, cities, oceans, and even aircraft where we are testing the limits of human psychology, teamwork, and technology before attempting real off-world settlement.
To kick off the series, Joe starts big with the World’s Biggest Analog, a first-of-its-kind global simulation that connected 16 habitats across 16 countries in a shared Mars mission. Rather than isolating one crew in one location, this ambitious project explored what planetary-scale collaboration might look like for future settlements.
Joe is joined by Jas Purewal, Senior Scientist and the founder and Director of the World’s Biggest Analog, a role she somehow balances alongside her many others. Jas is also the co-founder and Director of the Analog Astronaut Community which brings together analog astronauts and researchers from around the world and will host its 5th Analog Astronaut Conference from April 30 to May 3, 2026, at Biosphere 2.
In this conversation, we explore how the World’s Biggest Analog came together, what it revealed about global cooperation, and why analog missions are critical rehearsals for humanity’s next giant leap.

Links:
https://www.worldsbiggestanalog.com/
https://www.analog-astronaut.com/

The opportunity to integrate the International Guidelinesand Standards for Analogs during the World’s Biggest Analog was made possible through the generous support of J Trent Adams.
A huge thank you as well to Jas Purewal for joining me today and sharing her time to talk about the World’s Biggest Analog, to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, to Ceci Gigliofor the incredible graphics, to Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the FB group, and to my family for even entertaining the idea that our daughters totally wouldn’t mind the 2 hourcommute to a Mars magnet school.

Christianity has spent two thousand years adapting to new cultures, continents, and ways of living. But what happens when the frontier is no longer Earth at all?
In the finale of our Religion on Mars series, Joe Sweeney turns to Christianity — the world’s most practiced religion, with close to two billion followers and tens of thousands of denominations — to ask how faith might function on the Red Planet. To keep the conversation grounded, this episode focuses on Catholicism, one of Christianity’s oldest and largest traditions, with a global presence stretching from small rural parishes to the Vatican itself.
Joe is joined by Father Andrew Pinsent , a Catholic priest, physicist, and philosopher, to explore how Christian belief, ritual, and authority might adapt in an off-world environment. Together, they discuss questions future Martian settlers would inevitably face: How do the sacraments work in space? What role do priests play when communication with Earth is delayed by minutes? How does Catholicism understand community, embodiment, and meaning in extreme isolation?
The conversation also touches on Christianity’s long history of responding to unfamiliar and challenging environments, from deserts and monasteries to oceans and frontiers, and what that history suggests about faith beyond Earth. And stick around to the end, where Joe and Father Pinsent reflect on a question that lingers throughout the episode: how might Jesus himself feel about the idea of humans settling Mars?

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A huge thank you to Fr. Andrew Pinsent for taking the time to lend me his speculative and sage wisdom, to Nick Thorburn for the epic theme music, to Ceci Giglio for the amazing graphics, to Jero Squartini for the incredible animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for letting me turn the dining room into a temple/mosque/church for the last month.

What happens to Islam when Earth is no longer beneath your feet?
This episode is the third installment in Aspiring Martians’ January series exploring Religion on Mars, following conversations on Buddhism and Hinduism, and leading into next week’s series finale on Christianity.
Joe is joined by Dr. Reza Aslan, a globally recognized scholar of religion, bestselling author, and public intellectual known for making complex religious history accessible and deeply human. Reza’s work focuses on Islam as a living tradition shaped by debate, migration, interpretation, and history rather than rigid doctrine.
In this conversation, Joe and Reza explore how Islam might function on Mars by first grounding the discussion in its origins — how Islam spread through trade, scholarship, and governance, and how its decentralized authority structure shapes religious decision-making today. They dive into the Five Pillars of Islam and examine how daily prayer, fasting during Ramadan, charity, pilgrimage, and belief itself might adapt on a planet with different days, directions, and environmental constraints.
The episode also explores Islam’s long relationship with astronomy, space, and scientific inquiry, including how Muslim scholars studied Mars centuries before modern telescopes, and how contemporary Muslim-majority nations are actively engaged in space exploration today. Along the way, they unpack why science fiction — especially Dune — draws so heavily from Islamic culture, language, and ideas of power, scarcity, and survival in harsh environments.
Rather than asking whether Islam can “work” on Mars, this episode reframes the question entirely: what does a faith built on adaptability, intention, and community already understand about living meaningfully in extreme places?

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A huge thank you to Reza for joining me on today’s episodeand sharing his incredible intellect and insights, to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, to Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, to Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the FB group, and to my family for putting up with my incessant Mars ramblings at all hours of the day.

This episode is the second installment in Aspiring Martians’ January series exploring Religion on Mars — and what happens to belief systems when Earth is no longer the center of human life.
There are over 1.2 billion Hindus in the world today. To cover how such a prolific religion has lasted almost 4,000 years and what that future may hold on Mars, Joe is joined by Dr. Subhash Kak, a computer scientist, philosopher of science, and Vedic scholar whose work sits at the intersection of modern science and ancient Indian thought. Dr. Kak has published extensively on artificial intelligence, consciousness, cosmology, and Indian systems of knowledge, and recently co-authored Project Omega, a book exploring what future life across the solar system — including Mars — might realistically look like.
Together, they explore how Hinduism’s vast sense of time, multiple worlds, and non-Earth-centric worldview translate naturally to space exploration. The conversation touches on the four aims of life (dharma, artha, kama, moksha), the role of deities as bridges to deeper philosophical ideas, Vedanta’s influence on modern physics, reincarnation on a cosmic scale, the red planet’s role in Hindu cosmology, how ancient belief systems and modern spaceflight quietly converged with India’s Mars mission, Mangalyaan, and why Hinduism tends to be remarkably comfortable with the idea that humans want to spread out into the cosmos.

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Project Omega: The Future of Life in the Solar System - https://www.amazon.com/Project-Omega-Future-Solar-System/dp/8199391553

A special thank you to Dr. Subhash Kak for joining me today and sharing his insight, to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, to Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, to Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the FB group, and to my family for letting me talk about Mars all the time.