Why Is It Hard To Colonize Mars?
Being the second smallest planet in the solar system and named after the Roman god of war,
Mars is considered to be a desolate, frigid and inhospitable rock whose colonization is
one of the biggest challenges in our century.
Curious to know why it is so hard to colonize Mars?
Keep Watching!!
Mars exploration and colonization have been a fantasy and a really hard challenge for
Humans in the current century.
However, we are working to make this dream a reality where NASA is planning to put humans
on Mars by the end of 2030.
One of the biggest challenges is transporting astronauts and payload across the 34 million
miles of space that exists between Mars and Earth, however, upon their arrival; humans
will have to face many other challenges during the course of their mission.
For instance, they will have to find solutions for life threatening problems such as the
lack of water, thin atmosphere, the high levels of radiation, toxic soil, cold temperatures
and low gravity.
In this video, we’ll talk about each factor of these serious problems in detail.
1- Lack of Water, As we all know, water is the most important and essential factor when
it comes to the lives of humans and their survival.
However, Mars does not contain water or at least it does not contain water in a form
suitable for human usage.
There were signs of water on the red planet illustrated in some images sent by The Mariner
9 and Viking space probes back to the 1970s.
Moreover, in 2018, a study was published in the science journal reporting that an approximately
12 miles in width lack; had been found and it’s located about a mile below the south
pole of Mars.
Additionally, scientists had found eight regions on Mars where soil erosion had uncovered huge
areas of ice deposits below the Martian surface.
In 2019, the American Geophysical Union reported that they located layers of ice and sand buried
a mile beneath Mars’s north pole.
All of this information demonstrates that Mars does contain water on its surface, however,
the technology required to extract this embedded water is not available to us, Yet.
NASA is working on this problem through forming partnerships in order to advance their mining
technologies for use in space exploration.
The results of these partnerships are very promising where in July 2019, along with Honeybee
Robotics and the University of Central Florida, NASA showed off a prototype spacecraft that
is called “The World Is Not Enough” or WINE, for short, it is a prototype of the
size of a microwave oven specifically designed to mine soil on asteroids, extract water from
this soil and then use it to generate steam in order to propel itself to its next mining
destination.
It’s a truly promising technology but it can be adapted to harvest water for Mars exploration.
2- Thin Atmosphere, an atmosphere is one of the most important factors that a planet must
acquire in order to support human life and survival.
However, Mars’s atmosphere is very thin and it’s made up of all the wrong combinations
of gases.
For example, it’s mostly composed of carbon dioxide, approximately 95.3% of Mars’s atmosphere
is carbon dioxide which is a very high ratio compared to less than 1% on Earth.
Moreover, Mars’s atmosphere has barely any oxygen, around 0.13% compared to 21% on Earth,
which is very unfortunate due to the fact that humans need oxygen to breath.
In addition to this, Mars’s atmosphere contains a very small ratio of nitrogen, around 2.7%
compared to 78% on Earth which is also very unfortunate due to the fact that plants need
nitrogen to survive.
Besides the wrong combinations of gases in Mars’s atmosphere, the atmospheric pressure
is unfortunately quite low , around 6.1 millibars compared to 1,013.25 millibars on Earth.
In order to fully grasp this, the atmospheric pressure is crucial to the survival of humans
and without it, the trapped air pockets inside the human body would expand, the eardrums
would rapture and the water ratio in the body would boil.
All of these life threatening obstacles will face any crew members during their mission
on Mars due to the extremely low pressure of its atmosphere.
Therefore, in general, astronauts must wear pressurized suits to survive in space and
they have to wear them all the time on Mars as well or even live in pressurized habitats.
This will limit their freedom of moving around to collect data or samples and transporting
the equipment necessary for performing their experiments specific to their mission.
Having a thin atmosphere leads to many catastrophic consequences as well, for example, the martian
thin atmosphere allows the heat provided from the sun to escape into outer space; which
makes the martian nights very cold with temperatures reaching minus 285 degrees fahrenheit or even
below.
Although numerous solutions regarding engineering an atmosphere on Mars have been proposed,
None of them can possibly work unfortunately.
To elaborate, these proposed solutions suggest engineering an artificial atmosphere on Mars
which would produce the necessary gases and worm the planet.
Moreover, they suggest stimulating the greenhouse gases that include carbon dioxide and water
vapor which already exist on the planet to rise into the air and create a thick atmosphere.
However, according to a study published in Nature Astronomy in 2018, Mars does not have
enough of these elements on its surface in order to create such an atmosphere necessary
to sustain human life.
Thereby, the optimum solution is that; astronauts travelling to Mars will need to bring all
of the life-support systems with them.
3- High Levels Of Radiation, we all know that the Sun, like any other star, is a fusion
reactor that emits enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy with all different types of spectrum
including X-rays, Gamma rays and ultraviolet radiation.
Moreover, the sun also emits high energy protons, atomic nuclei and many other subatomic particles
which have significant risk on the human body.
For example, it can affect the central nervous system, increase the lifetime risk for cancer,
cause sickness and degenerative diseases.
Fortunately, Earth’s strong magnetic field forms an invisible barrier against most of
the incident radiation and diverts the electrically charged particles back into space, additionally,
the remnants of the radiation are absorbed by the thick atmosphere of our planet.
Thereby, astronauts outside our protective atmosphere are at risk due to the fact that
they are directly exposed to high levels of radiation.
Moreover, according to the European Space Agency “ESA”, the martian thin atmosphere
absorbs radiation doses up to 700 times higher than on Earth.
However, the ESA agency is collaborating with some particle accelerator labs to develop
new technologies that can help mitigate the exposure.
In particular, they try to recreate rays of the cosmic radiation and then build shields
that can protect astronauts against it.
Moreover, in order to track the radiation exposure outside the Earth orbit, the ESA
agency has collaborated with NASA to send radiation sensors on the upcoming Orion test
launch during their mission to the Moon.
Fortunately, an experiment has been conducted, recently, onboard the international space
station, the results of this experiment have shown that astronauts are actually able to
mix cement in microgravity conditions.
These results can be extended in the favor of Mars colonization; more specifically, concrete
is a protective and sturdy material which is already used on Earth at nuclear facilities
to help protect people from being directly exposed to the nuclear radiation.
Thereby, It’s possible that people colonizing Mars can use the Martian soil to make concrete
that would help them construct habitable structures which would help protect them against the
high levels of radiation as well.
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4- Toxic Soil, It’s highly likely that the martian soil is toxic to the living cells
which implies that we would not be able to grow food on Mars.
According to scientists at the university of Edinburgh; the martian surface is less
inhabitable than we had previously thought.
This means that they need to develop new methodologies in order to be able to grow food on Mars before
the human colonization on Mars becomes a reality.
Their findings were based on a study and an experiment conducted on a soil that contains
perchlorates which is believed to exist in the martian soil.
When perchlorates are exposed to UV light, they form a toxic cocktail of by-products.
Recall that there are high levels of radiation on Mars and the short-wave ultraviolet radiation
is one of them and this exactly the type of radiation used in the experiment.
Moreover, there are additional chemical materials that interact with perchlorates which further
increases the soil toxicity.
Scientists believe that these chemical materials are iron oxides and hydrogen peroxide.
According to Simon George, who is a professor of organic geochemistry at Macquarie University,
“ There’s no Ozone layer on Mars, so UV rays penetrate down to the surface and they
are very toxic, they give you really bad sunburn if you’re on the surface.
But what happens is this UV radiation interacts with perchlorates and produces side products,
Probably chlorite and others, which are the things that are really toxic to life”.
Although these findings seem to be pessimistic, there’s still a possibility that we will
find life on Mars but we need to search deeper and if NASA is going to send a human mission
to Mars by 2030, then they must must know whether Mars is a suitable home for microbial
life and if it’s going to be safe for humans.
Astrobiologists are working on new methods and technologies via which there's a possibility
to treat the Martian soil with enzymes in order to put the perchlorates to good use
and release considerable amounts of oxygen.
5- Cold Temperatures, due to the fact that Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere that
is around 100 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere, there’s no thermal blanket that
can help retain any thermal energy on the surface.
The average temperatures on the martian surface can reach about minus 60 degrees celsius.
Now you may wonder why temperatures on Mars are cold despite the fact that its atmosphere
is mostly made up of carbon dioxide?!
And in order to understand the answer to this question, you need to know that there are
four major factors that control the temperature of any planet’s surface; these factors are
atmospheric composition, atmospheric density, water content and the distance from the sun.
What makes Earth a habitable planet is the balance between these four factors and any
disturbances or changes in this balance lead to significant effects on the climate on a
planetary scale.
The greenhouse effect is one example of these planetary scale effects.
Where the gradual increase of the planet’s surface temperature is because of the increased
concentrations of the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, sulphur dioxide,
sulphur hexafluoride and many other gases.
Surprisingly, we have raised carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere by a very small fraction
of a percent since the 1950s and it has already been causing several changes in our climate.
Moreover, water plays a crucial role in the surface temperature of any planet, it helps
make heat currents move slowly which helps retain the thermal energy inside the atmosphere.
When it comes to Mars, it has a very thin atmosphere that is about 96% carbon dioxide,
moreover, it’s also extremely dry because it lacks any water content and it’s located
further away from the sun.
All of these factors cause Mars to be an extremely cold and harsh world which would make it harder
for us to colonize it one day.
6- Low Gravity, Martian gravity is approximately 40 percent of that on Earth which means that
humans exposed to this partial gravity are very likely to experience muscle atrophy which
will not be a good thing especially if they are going to stay for long periods of time
on Mars.
To sum it up, Any crew mission on Mars will experience many harsh and life threatening
conditions from the lack of oxygen and water, the deadly radiation, the low gravity, toxic
soil and the extremely cold surface temperatures.
This means that if we really want to send a mission to the red planet by 2030, then
we have to find solutions and develop new technologies to help make human colonization
on Mars viable.
Thanks For Watching Everyone!!
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Do you think that we can actually colonize Mars one day?
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