One of the best ways to find out the challenges of living on Mars is to simulate living on another planet here on Earth. So what’s it like to spend several months living the Martian life?
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.
Earth is a relatively dry planet compared to some of the other ocean worlds in our Solar system. Life needs water so what about life on these other places?
A study is being done in Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression - a natural environment like no other on earth - to understand how microbes thrive in extreme environments such as those found on Mars.
Interplanetary colonisation was once the stuff of science fiction but now there are plans to colonise Mars. How have film-makers and writers dealt with our rapacious Anthropocene age?
The recently broadcast TV mini-series, “Mars”, combines fiction and nonfiction in a way that places them in balance. This kind of combination is likely to feature in more television series and films.
Recent high-profile disappointments make it tempting to this our efforts to explore Mars are cursed. But landing anywhere in space is hard – not least on the Red Planet.
ESA’s second mission to Mars has become prey to the curse of the Red Planet – although the orbiter is heading for success, the Schiaparelli lander seems to have disappeared.
A true plan for the colonisation of Mars should include both the social and technical feasibility of living there. Unfortunately, Musk left that bit out.
Scientists say they’ve found fossils showing life existed on Earth 3.7 billion years ago. How good is the evidence? And what does it mean for the search for life elsewhere in our solar system?
Speaking with: Juan Francisco Salazar about colonising Antarctica and Mars
The Conversation, CC BY-NC-SA19.5 MB(download)
Dallas Rogers speaks with Prof Juan Francisco Salazar about studying the research community in Antarctica to learn about what colonising Mars and other planets might look like.
What’s the best way to find out how people will cope with the journey to Mars and life on another planet? Lock a test crew up for a year in a simulation right here on Earth.