Meet the space cadets: 5 Bay Area residents selected to compete for one-way Mars voyage

World-traveled, sociable, yearning for a new planet.

That seems to be the typical rsum for those vying to be included on a one-way trip to Mars. Add "Bay Area resident" into the mix and it would seem your chances of becoming one of the first explorers on another planet will improve exponentially.

On Monday, the Mars One project announced that five Bay Area residents are among the 100 finalists for a privately funded space voyage that has the lofty goal of, beginning in 10 years, sending 24 humans from Earth to the red planet annually in groups of four. The catch is that they will never return.

The local finalists are Kenya Armbrister of Oakland, Megan Kane of San Francisco, Yvonne Young of Berkeley, Xuan Linh Vu of San Francisco and Peter Felgentreff of Montara.

More than 200,000 people from around the world applied by August 2013 for the interplanetary exploration project created by two men from the Netherlands, entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp and physicist Arno Wielders. Since then, Mars One trimmed the number of candidates to 1,058 and then to 100, with medical examinations disqualifying more than 300 applicants in between.

The medical examinations ensured that the remaining candidates were in good health and disease free, with stellar vision and a proper amount of body fat.

The next phase required astronaut hopefuls to focus on the mission itself, with interviewers testing the group on Martian-survival questions. Mars One provided the candidates with a study guide that included answers to questions such as, "How much radiation is an astronaut exposed to during spaceflight?"

When contacted by The San Francisco Examiner this week, all five Bay Area contestants were thrilled with the possibility that they would going to Mars.

KENYA ARMBRISTER: LIFE FULL OF JOURNEYS

The 36-year-old Oakland resident said she has traveled to 179 cities in 30 countries since first leaving her hometown of Fresno for Germany at 18 years old. She speaks three languages and has two master's degrees. But until recently, she had never prepared for a dust storm on Mars.

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Meet the space cadets: 5 Bay Area residents selected to compete for one-way Mars voyage