Exploring Life on Mars: Possibilities and Experiments for Future Habitats

Jakarta –

The vastness of the universe makes people often question whether there is other life beyond Earth. This causes the search for Mars to become life other than Earth is also being carried out.

In fact, looking at the natural conditions belonging to the planet Mars, one can actually answer that this planet has been said to be a planet that is not habitable.

Nevertheless, astronomers continue to explore Mars and life on it, especially the presence of water as a source of life.

Conditions on Mars: Cold and Dry

Written on NASA’s website, Mars has a temperature that is hundreds of degrees lower than Earth, making this planet very cold.

Not only that, Mars also has a hundred times less atmosphere, meaning that Mars has almost no oxygen.

If you view these natural conditions, it is certainly impossible for humans to live on the planet Mars. But what worries astronomers is that there may be other forms of life that can evolve and are similar to the early evolution of life on Earth.

However, there is evidence that Mars was warmer in the past and had stable liquid surface water for hundreds of thousands of years.

Therefore, it is possible that in the past there was a time when Mars had life that could have evolved in a certain environment.

However, on page Scientific American it is revealed that although Mars was habitable in the past, but this planet has never really resembled Earth, it has always been a unique and alien world.

If we want life on Mars in the future, we need to take inspiration from Mars, which was once thought to be habitable.

Experiments to Transfer Life to Mars

Mars is known to have a natural process called the solid state greenhouse effect. This process will heat the permafrost just below the surface on Mars’ polar caps each summer.

This effect will occur when visible light is emitted to the inside of the thermal insulation material. Then, the heat gets trapped inside and a dramatic warming occurs.

The process inspired researchers to see how much heat could be generated on Mars by a thin layer of translucent solid material on the surface.

Experiments were carried out using silica aerogel which is an exotic material that is very insulating, very light (more than 97 percent is air), and almost transparent to light, making it an ideal material for creating greenhouse heating in a strong solid state.

As a result, it was found that a layer of silica airgel with a thickness of two to three centimeters placed not far above the surface of Mars can keep the layers below it warm.

This is enough to grow algae or plants and block most of the harmful UV radiation.

Unfortunately, silica aerogels are quite brittle so to provide strong protection and internal pressure control, they need to be modified or combined with other materials.

Then, the production of this material becomes a question and how to get it to Mars. It is known that one standard industry approach to producing this material involves a high-pressure CO2 dewatering stage, which can use CO2 supplied from the atmosphere.

However, organisms on Earth are highly skilled at manipulating silica at the nanometer scale (such as glass sponges and diatom phytoplankton).

Speculatively, it may one day be adapted for organisms to produce materials similar to silica aerogels, thereby creating a biosphere that helps maintain a habitable environment.

The next step taken in this experiment is to conduct trials in the field.

It is known that there are several locations on Earth that are not as friendly to life as Mars, such as the Atacama Desert and Dry Valleys in Antarctica. If the experiment is successful and makes these sites habitable, it will prove that this experiment can work on the surface of Mars.

Unfortunately, there remains another obstacle to moving life to Mars, namely planetary protection.

Any plan to place life on Mars must avoid contaminating places where life might have existed before.

This will be easier to do using a regional approach that can be developed. However, its implementation still requires very careful consideration in the future.

At present, we are still a long way from creating self-sustaining habitats on other planets. But for many researchers, these experiments could open a plausible path to creating life on Mars.

Watch Video “Mars Exploration Ends Leaving Out Space Trash“

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