Astronauts traveling to Mars and beyond would face serious psychological challenges. A well-designed media program – based on an old-fashioned schedule – might help make life at least a bit easier.
Spend many months attached to the ISS and see how well you grow.
NASA
If you want to live on Mars, you're going to need to grow food. Seeds are naturally equipped to handle challenging Earth environments, but how well can they survive what they'll encounter off-planet?
The star TRAPPIST-1 with three of its planets.
ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)
To get us to Mars and beyond, a team of students from around the world has a plan involving lunar rovers mining ice and a space station between the Earth and the moon.
Every moment of life on our planet has had the force of gravity in the background. But the prospect of long-distance space travel means it's time to figure out what happens to our biology in its absence.
Inflatable space habitats, like the one installed on the International Space Station this week, could see wide application in space and planetary exploration.
Four decades later, I find myself surveying 13 billion years of cosmic history and mapping events that really did happen a long time ago in galaxies far, far away.
