for over a century movies have
perpetuated the idea and the hope that
there's intelligent life on Mars there
isn't yet
but sometime late in this century two
people from Earth might give birth to
the first Martian maybe the first of
many more we will be the Martians part
of the reason for sending people to Mars
would be to do some compelling science
so we would imagine them taking samples
analyzing them trying to understand the
environment when those rocks form things
like that astronauts could use all
variety of tools hammers and lenses
spectrometers of various source chemical
analysis machines there'd be probably
some mobile laboratory on the rover that
would use the materials that they gather
to look at the composition and so on
Valles Marineris has a whole variety of
different segments there's places in the
middle where there's one two three or
even four parallel canyons where you go
down and up and down and up and down and
up and then a very eastern end that
looks like water came flushing out
through what would be a chaos zone
catastrophic floods of water that might
have come out was there life in that
water
could some of the rock samples they dig
up have enough evidence of fossilized
bacteria Mars was once a warm and wet
planet and we know that for a fact us
there are water erosion features all
over the surface of Mars to look for
fossils of life you want to look for
places where water has flown or
accumulated and the Valles Marineris
might be one of those places I think
it's certainly possible that there's
bacterial activity on Mars now but
that's by no means certain that's it's a
very interesting current scientific
question I think it's one of the sort of
most intriguing questions and solar
system science suddenly the search for
life pauses as the fight for survival
resumes
mission control signals that a high-risk
solar flare is headed for Mars a solar
flare is a tremendous outburst from a
relatively small region of the Sun a
huge amount of energy goes pouring out
explosively
and a bunch of energetic charged
particles go zooming through the solar
system they can interact with cells and
harm them also high-energy
electromagnetic radiation like x-rays
gets produced and those can harm us as
well so it's wham and then wham again
some time later
Earth's magnetic field shields us from
the worst effects of solar flares but
Mars lost its magnetic field four
billion years ago a solar flare of
charged protons would be far more
dangerous here than on earth
after a solar flare is seen by people on
earth we want to warn the astronauts on
Mars now we can't warn them about the
electromagnetic flash because our
warning signal would travel at the same
speed as that flash from the Sun but we
can warn them about the onslaught of
charged particles the high-energy
charged particles can travel perhaps at
half the speed of light the hab has a
radiation proof chamber but it's now too
far away while the astronauts spacesuits
shielded them from the solar flares
x-rays they have only minutes to seek
shelter before the flares high-energy
second wave
slams into Mars
for the astronauts in the middle of the
Valles Marineris the only shelter is
their pressurized Rover the rover's
primary radiation shielding isn't LED
it's the food packets lining the walls
along with the astronauts own waste
material feces contain hydrocarbons and
hydrocarbons contain hydrogen and
hydrogen is a very good absorber of
radiation hydrogen that you have in the
form of food before it's consumed will
help shield you from some portion of
this radiation and certainly once you've
consumed the food you want to put your
feces in these little sealable zip
blocks and back on the wall of your
vehicle to shield you from radiation if
you're going to survive in space almost
nothing can go to waste
not even waste
there's plenty of risks associated with
the human lauren's mission but if you
look at human history you know one thing
is clear nothing great has ever been
accomplished without risk and nothing
great has ever been accomplished without
courage if we send humans to Mars in our
time if we establish that little
Plymouth Rock settlement on Mars in our
time which is what it's within our
capability then five hundred years from
now there will be new branches of human
civilization on Mars and on many worlds
beyond it's the birth of the future
you