• Question: do you think we can live on mars and what vitals do we need.

    Asked by Tescovalue to Stephen, Sammie, Rachel, Lisa on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Sammie Buzzard

      Sammie Buzzard answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Yes! We need oxygen, water, a pressurised environment, and food (so we’d need to find a way to grow food if we were going to stay there).
      And I think radiation shielding as well since Mars has no atmosphere.

    • Photo: Lisa Baddeley

      Lisa Baddeley answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      Hi, We could live on Mars but, as Sammie say, there are a few things we would need some form of protection from the harsh environment.
      In addition – we need to make sure we managed to get there safely. There are cosmic rays (high energy particles which travel across the galaxy) and there are huge explosions going on on the Sun all the time and these send out huge amounts of radiation. We’re protected here on Earth by our atmosphere and also by our magnetic field. It takes between 6 to 8 months to currently reach Mars and during that time the astronauts won’t have any protective shielding from the radiation and cosmic rays. There is work going on now trying to figure out how best to protect any astronauts who do try to go to Mars. The most probable solution will be to give a small area of the ship extra protection (making it out of certain metals) where the astronauts can shelter if there is a large amount of solar radiation (similar to what is done on the space station now).

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