One day, we may become Mars. Not bright green creatures with three eyes and antennae on their heads, but humans born and raised on the red planet.
A group of researchers from NASA It lives for a year in an environment that mimics its habitat MarsIt was built in Texas, in preparation for the space agency’s ambitious plan to transport the first astronauts to the planet in the 2030s.
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing for the first round-trip flight from Earth to Mars at the end of this decade.
Accurate maps and local weather data are crucial for spacecraft to land safely on the planet.
In this sense, scientists from New York University Abu Dhabi (Nyuad) are working to bring the dream closer to reality through the Mars Atlas.
By carefully combining more than 3,000 high-resolution images collected by the UAE’s Hope Probe The team, which has been orbiting Mars since 2021, has created a “beautiful mosaic of colors across the planet,” said Dimitra Atri, head of Nioad’s Mars Research Group.
“In the history of Mars exploration, many probes have had accidents,” Atri recalls, adding that the rarefied atmosphere makes it difficult for rockets to slow down, and even low winds can alter landing trajectories.
“If the probe collides and breaks, it is a huge waste of science and resources. But when we send humans, we have to be more careful.”
Understanding daily and seasonal weather patterns can help researchers determine the safest time and place to land.
Subsidence is just one of the challenges that precision atlases can help overcome. Identifying the best locations for human settlements in terms of landscape, temperature and resources is another benefit of it.
“If ice is available, we can turn it into water that can be used for housing,” Atri explains.
The lead researcher added: “It may seem ridiculous, but perhaps in the future, it will be very common for people to go to Mars and even live there.”
Dust and desertification
Astronomers have The map of Mars was drawn nearly two centuries ago. The first map of Mars was produced in 1840 by Wilhelm Baer and Johann von Madler in Germany.
But it was Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli’s 1877 map that sparked an enduring fascination with the idea of a Martian civilization, when the natural water channels he identified on the map were incorrectly labeled as artificial waterways.
NASA’s Mariner missions of the 1960s and 1970s provided a better understanding of the Martian terrain, including the first images of volcanoes, lava flows, rocky canyons, and massive dust storms.
In the following decades, NASA created a series of maps, including this one Based on minerals of the planet. Earlier this year, the US space agency issued a detailed report 3D interactive map From Mars.
Newad’s map is “the first to fully use true color images of the entire planet,” Atri said.
NASA’s Goddard Space Science Institute has begun using the Newad map in its Mars 24 program, which keeps precise time on Mars.
JMARS, a public database used by NASA scientists to plan missions, has also integrated the atlas into its database.
said Scott Dickenshead, JMARS representative CNN The Newad map is “created from data obtained more recently than some previous global maps” and provides “additional perspective on what Mars is like.”
While NASA and ESA’s instruments provide higher-resolution data over a longer period, the instrument used to collect data from the Newad Atlas is able to “observe the entire Martian disk at once,” Dickenscheid says.
According to a JMARS database representative, the perspective “could be very useful for researchers looking to monitor clouds or dust storm activity on a planetary scale.”
Mars and Earth
There is a theory that Mars was once a water-covered planet like Earth, and could have supported life, but the thinning of its atmosphere caused heat and dryness, leading to its current barren state.
The planet is now home to regular global dust storms, which have a major impact on its climate, including blocking radiation and trapping heat.
Desertification is a growing problem on Earth, especially in regions such as the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.
Newad’s Atri believes climate scientists can apply data collected about Martian desertification to Earth, “to understand what could happen to our planet in the future.”
“What worries me is that if we don’t do enough on the ground [para combater a mudança climática]”It could look like Mars,” he added.
In the future, researcher Atri plans to recreate Martian conditions in the laboratory to study the behavior of plants.
Mars has a harsh, unforgiving environment: an extremely thin atmosphere, extremely low temperatures, and high levels of ultraviolet radiation.
Otri says the plants he will study, which grow naturally in dry, salty soil in desert regions such as the United Arab Emirates, could help understand how plants can survive the harsh climate of the Red Planet.
With this, researchers can find better ways to grow food in space or improve agriculture in arid regions on Earth.
The research is in the early planning stages, and Atri hopes to get the first real samples from Mars around 2033.
There are also other scientists studying how innovations being developed to grow food on Mars could have an impact on Earth.
About 34% of all global human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, which uses huge amounts of land and water.
But shortcomings in the system mean that a third of the world’s food goes to waste, while more than 345 million people are severely food insecure, and there are high rates of hunger and malnutrition.
Limited resources in space mean that food production technology on Mars must be highly efficient and closed-loop, with little or no waste.
Last month, British scientists published an article in the journal Nature Food exploring how environmentally controlled farming in space could be a “gateway” to developing Earth-like technology.
Two Canadian scientists who study food have published a book saying that growing food on Mars could transform agriculture on Earth.
Lessons learned about Mars’ geology, climate and atmosphere could also help inform whether any of the thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system might be habitable or able to maintain an atmosphere.
Many scientists believe that life on Earth arose on Mars billions of years ago, and Atri believes that the Red Planet is the ideal laboratory to test this theory.
“We need to understand our neighbors,” said Atri, head of the Newad study. “Maybe there was life at some point, or maybe there is some life beneath the surface that is still alive. Maybe we have common ancestry. Who do you know? It’s our best bet to understand ourselves and where we come from.”
See also – Perseverance probe landing on Mars: What is the “seven minutes of terror” moment?
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