Can humans breathe on Mars? page all

Can humans breathe on Mars?
– Jack J., age 7, Alexandria, Virginia, United States

By: Phylindia Gant and Amy J. Williams

EXAMPLE you are a astronaut that has just landed planet Mars. What do you need to survive?

Here’s the short list: water, food, shelter – and oxygen.

Oxygen it is the air we breathe on Earth. Plants and some types of bacteria produce oxygen for us.

But oxygen isn’t the only gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is not even the most abundant. In fact, only 21% of our air is made up of oxygen. Almost everything else is nitrogen, around 78%.

So you might ask yourself: if there is more nitrogen in the air, why do we breathe oxygen?

Here’s how it works: Technically, when you inhale, you absorb everything into the atmosphere. But your body only uses oxygen; that you exhale when you exhale.

Read also: Chinese astronauts plant rice in space, what are the results?

Air on Mars

Mars’ atmosphere is thin: its volume is only 1% of the Earth’s atmosphere. In other words, there is 99% less air on Mars than on Earth.

This is partly due to the fact that Mars is about half the size of the Earth. Its gravity is not strong enough to prevent atmospheric gases from escaping into space.

And the most abundant gas in nothing is carbon dioxide. For people on Earth, it is a highly concentrated poisonous gas. Fortunately, the carbon dioxide content is less than 1% in our atmosphere. But on Mars, it’s up to 96% in the air!

Meanwhile, there is hardly any oxygen on Mars. Only 1/10 percent of the air is barely sufficient for human survival.

If you try to breathe on the surface of Mars without a full set of oxygen supply equipment – this is a bad idea – you will die in an instant. You will choke and, due to the low atmospheric pressure, your blood will boil, both happening at roughly the same time.

Life without oxygen

So far, researchers have found no evidence of life on Mars. But the search has only just begun; Our scout robots haven’t found anything yet.

It goes without saying that Mars has an extreme environment. And it’s not just air. There is very little water on the surface of Mars. It gets very cold – at night, it’s over -100 degrees Fahrenheit (-73 degrees Celsius).

But many organisms on Earth survive in extreme environments. Life has been found in the Antarctic ice, at the bottom of the oceans and miles below the earth’s surface. Many of these places have very hot or cold temperatures, with almost no water and little or no oxygen.

And even if life had ceased to exist on Mars, it could have been billions of years ago, when it had a denser atmosphere, more oxygen, warmer temperatures, and large amounts of water on the surface.

This is one of the goals of NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover mission: to look for signs of past Martian life. That’s why the mission searched Martian rock for fossils of organisms that once lived – most likely, primitive life, such as Martian microbes.

Read also: The astronaut’s bone density decreases after space travel, this is the cause

Create your oxygen

Among the seven instruments aboard the Perseverance rover is the MOXIE, an extraordinary device that removes carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere and converts it into oxygen.

If MOXIE works as scientists hope, future astronauts will not only produce their own oxygen; they could use it as a component of the rocket fuel they needed to return to Earth.

The more oxygen humans can produce on Mars, the less they will have to transport from Earth and the easier it will be for visitors to get there. But even with self-produced oxygen, astronauts still need space suits.

Currently, NASA is working on the new technology needed to send humans to Mars. This could happen in the next decade, perhaps in the late 1930s. By that time, you’ve already grown up and could be one of the first humans to set foot on Mars.

Phylindia glove

Ph.D. Student in Geological Sciences, University of Florida

Amy J. Williams

Associate Professor of Geology, University of Florida

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