Skywatchers have been getting the best glimpse they’ll get of our red-gold neighbor for the next 284 years. Mars is currently closer to Earth than it’s been in 59,619 years, a mere 34,646,418 miles away. It won’t be this up-close and personal again until almost the 24th century. In some alternate history, there might have been a plan to take advantage of this proximity and put humans on Mars. After all, America reached the moon in 1969