10 songs to soundtrack the human race's journey to Mars with Elon Musk

Today Elon Musk announced at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia his updated plan on the mission to bring the human race to Mars.

Nine years after his corporation SpaceX almost went bankrupt, the internationally famous innovator broke news that he projects to land at least two ships on Mars within the next five years to build power, mining and life-supporting systems to prepare for inhabitance.

Ships transporting actual crews would follow two years later, in 2024, to start the first human civilizations.

Mixmag has always been highly intrigued by outer space, with a passion for electronic artists inspired by the great beyond. There is the dark, intergalactic, twisting drum and quiet, lonesome buzz of cross-genre techno, backdropped by and blending with the vast, opulent beauty of our universe.

Here are 10 tracks to indulge in as you get lost in stunning images of space, envisioning our journey to the Red Planet.

Sydney is Mixmag's US Digital Content Editor. Follow her on Twitter here

The hopeful, ethereal commencement of the journey starts with a stunning original by Stimming, filling the infinite silence of outer space with uplifting, aqueous chords.

It's time to get dark, real dark. Here is Extrawelt's 'Dark Side Of My Room', released in the 2008 album 'Schone neue Extrawelt'.

Vibrating with glooming layers and a climbing repeating hook, the rotating techno beat follows as your eyes bounce between clusters speckled across the galaxy.

Like you didn't see this one coming.

'North Star' by Tale Of Us was the Italian duo's early magnum opus. The late 2015 behemoth put Matteo and Carmine on the map as the definitive, dramatic new techno act, even scoring them Mixmag's DJ Of The Year.

The piece bends from dense blackness to spurts of striking high cadence, carrying the aesthetic of an onyx mass spiraling in suspension, occasionally and with grace, catching the blade of an illuminated reflection.

Here's the original dark price, Richie Hawtin's Plastikman, to present one of his timelessly intense, space-age driven productions.

'Mind Encode' starts out with a dazed energy hovering in what one could imagine to be peaceful obscurity before seamlessly diving into a metallic, circulating tension.

The Innervisions duo fleets to a glimmering beacon of light across the vast dark, infinite nothingness seen across the universe. With Âme's enchanting 'Doldrums', we can't help but envision small spells of negative space slowly entangling among the extending fog of a distant Nebula.

Ah, here we go. Maceo Plex's 'Sparks Of Life' seems more of a space travel anthem than a techno maestro's surprise genre-crossing presentation.

The production's oscillating, beautifully expanding work explores a well of emotions and drama, it's true journey music with a heavy mid-plot twist.

We wouldn't be going dark, vast and mind-bending without some Recondite.

'Poised' is that one deadly track you heard in countless techno sets around the world but could never get a damn track ID because it was just obscure enough you couldn't describe it quite right.

It's smooth and somber and perfectly minimal, just like a spacecraft floating quietly with an incalculable sea of shadows and faint, isolated gleams of light.

Adriatique debuted their own 'Siamese' imprint with the release of 'Womb', a devilish techno ballad proclaiming the label's opaque, provocative style.

The track is one to twist up your spine and bring a new breed of depth, a motion wrangler that ricochets straight against the tinging high-tech metallic aesthetic of our galactic crossing.

The expedition grows closer to its end as forms of audio enlightenment flood through our systems with UNDR & Fideles' brilliant 'Strings Version' of their original 'Blade'.

Aptly sprouted from the pair's album 'Last Night On Earth', the melody is a rippling pour of sounds that pull at your chest and keep you short of breathe. It's progression dazzles with emotion while your line of sight blurs amid the suspended bouquets of colour against an endlessly dark space.

Alas, the finale of our journey of the cosmos ends with one of our favorite legends: Sasha.

'Linepulse' introduces cold textures and an elastic low-simmering hum that proves how minimal, ambient sounds can pack as much power as its burgeoning techno counterparts.

The track is perplexing and glossy, like carbonation dancing across the surface of an ice cold soda, or if we could imagine the color of how it sounds when two thin metal instruments lightly clash together.

Tangible, sensational, lucent.

Far, far away.

[Photos: NASA]