“Step by Step Guide How to Step on Mars” by Camila U.          

Mars. We are trying to live there, but why? Because we spoiled Earth? We will probably live on Mars, but before we can do that, we have to do a lot of work. It is very surprising to know that the intelligence of humankind can make us live on other planets, even if it is difficult. What is more, we all have to agree that knowing about a planet is very interesting, but how and if we can live there is another thing. Despite almost all people thinking that Mars is a desert and we don't blame them, it is not. As reported by Kennedyspacecenter NASA's phoenix landed on Mars on May 25 of 2008 but only could find water on July 31 of the same year. It could dig down and find ice below the desert-like soil on Mars. 

It is a noticeable fact that we are now trying to live on Mars, the easier planet to live – not counting Earth – but we still need our common necessities, and in that place it is more difficult to get. One example would be to have protection from radiation. It was bad news to find out that Mars has a lot of radiation. It is going to give more work to the incredible people that are creating the machines for us to go there. A lot of radiation could be very detrimental for us. According to BBC bitesize for protection of radiation, Dr. Aled Roberts from the University of Manchester had the idea of a natural "glue”. He says the dust of Mars is good to protect from radiation, but without anything to put them together, it is useless. Furthermore, Dr. Aled and his team found out that humans have a protein that is really sticky and when connecting it with urea and Mars dust makes Astro-Crete, a type of concrete that protects from radiation. He says that it could be used for emergencies because getting protein from humans can be really dangerous especially when you are on another planet with not much resources. 

A great step NASA gave was the fact that they are going to get water from Mars. On Mars there are cubs of ice. It is good that even if it doesn't have liquid water it has at least in solid form. As reported by Space.com, to get water from Mars people could dig the ice from its soil and then put it in an oven or put microwaves in the soil to then extract its vapor. To help this to be possible, RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot), an incredible lander that NASA made, was made to dig the surface at Mars and get the ice that is in it. This is how it works. RASSOR goes in the place it needs to dig. With its two bucket arms it gets the soil and then puts it inside it to extract the water it finds inside the soil, and then it leaves the soil back in the same place, also reported by Space.com. Regarding getting water, they had another magical idea the University of Washington had to get water from Mars was to get  from its atmosphere. As Stephen Petranek said in his Ted-Ed speech “This is a device cooked up at the University of Washington back in 1998. It's basically a low-tech dehumidifier. And it turns out the Mars atmosphere is often 100 percent humid. So this device can extract all the water that humans will need simply from the atmosphere on Mars.” 

To live on mars we will need oxygen of course, and for this NASA is creating machines for it. For example, MOXIE is one of them, it is extracting oxygen from Mars. It is a really intelligent way to solve this problem, when some day we step there, there will be oxygen to survive. Stephen Petranek made a Ted-Ed speech talking about Mars, and in one part he talked about MOXIE “This is a scientist at MIT named Michael Hecht. And he's developed this machine, Moxie. I love this thing. It's a reverse fuel cell, essentially, that sucks in the Martian atmosphere and pumps out oxygen. And you have to remember that CO2 -- carbon dioxide, which is 96 percent of Mars' atmosphere -- CO2 is basically 78 percent oxygen.” MOXIE could help a lot, I do not know how Michael Hetch did this magnificent invention but it is a lot worth it. As said by the Nasa Science Mars, a robot that NASA sent to Mars (Perseverance) was responsible for putting MOXIE on Mars to make a test. In April 2023 MOXIE celebrated its anniversary of 2 years there. In addition, Michael Hecht's incredible machine had made 13 executions of Oxygen, 100 grams of Oxygen and it had 1000 minutes of operations, which is few but after it will be much more!

We are trying hard to make life on Mars possible. With new technology they are making new machines and having new ideas for this possibility. Until the earth of Mars isn't covered with water, a really interesting fact on how we are going to survive there, speaking about food, is about planting our food there. We will need a microwaved-size chamber to plant our crops. We would also eat dry food from Earth. According to Reader's Digest We will need a machine to plant food on Mars, and it is called VEGGIE (The Vegetable Production System Project). Similarly, like a "box”, which has crops on it, it gets carbon dioxide from the atmosphere of Mars and then does the photosynthesis. It has controlled-released fertilizing and fans stir the air.  “Plants can be grown in space, but all require the management of gasses, water and a growing substrate,” says Dr Paul, studying the use of Arabidopsis (thale or mouse-ear cress) on the International Space Station. When it comes to food on Mars, we have VEGGIE but NASA is also working with Systems and Materials Research corporation (SMRC), which is a 3D food printer. NASA and other companies are having many ideas and getting them to work, which is the most shocking part of it. It is like a normal 3D printer but the interesting part that I particularly didn't know, is that it also exists but for food. As said by David J Irvin, director of SMRC.  “The food shape will be practical to guarantee even cooking and efficient processing times. So pizza will look like pizza and biscuits like biscuits. We’re not planning for Michelin-star food—just healthy and nutritious meals.” It is going to mold protein, make nutrients and lots of flavors. David J. Irvin says that he thinks there are going to be 25 to 50 types of food, reports Reader’s Digest.

Another reason is we are going to have a shelter. We could live in caves or lava tubes (there are many of them). For another option, as incredible as it seems, they have discovered how to make a really thick wall for protection! There are two ways for making these incredible shelters. With regard to the information we said before, about Dr. Aled and his team discover that by  mixing urea, mars dust and human protein it makes Astro-Crete, there is also another one the one Stephen Petranek talked about,  “At first we can use inflatable, pressurized buildings as well as the landers themselves. But this really only works during the daytime. There is too much solar radiation and too much radiation from cosmic rays. So we really have to go underground.“  he said in his speech.“Now, it turns out that the soil on Mars, by and large, is perfect for making bricks. And NASA has figured this one out, too. They're going to throw some polymer plastic into the bricks, shove them in a microwave oven, and then you will be able to build buildings with really thick walls. Or we may choose to live underground in caves or in lava tubes, of which there are plenty." This is really interesting to know there are two types for doing strong walls on Mars. We really didn't know that it even had already invented one concrete so strong, for a protective shelter on The Red planet.

For having a more Earth-like place on Mars, people are trying to warm up Mars. For this reason, they came up with a very intelligent idea, which was to put Mylar discs, a type of “mirror '', to reflect the sunlight to Mars and then warm it up. The idea to warm the planet, would make the increase of temperature release greenhouse gasses. Then Greenhouse gasses would trap solar radiation and it would help to make a thicker atmosphere on The Red planet. This is why scientists want to make factories of greenhouse gasses, such as,chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and carbon dioxide, as stated in PBS. One of the discussions they had about it was if they transported materials from the factories from Earth or did it with elements of Mars.

Besides all the difficulties we have, we also have many machines being created. We know that many companies are trying to make us live there. Including NASA who is doing a great part of it. NASA is creating the laser communication, a really interesting technology that will pass information and data sending it from Mars much quicker to Earth. There are some discussions about how much time it takes to do a map of Mars with laser communication. To be able to send a map of Mars to Earth with normal radio systems. It would take 9 years but with laser communication it would take only 9 months as said by Nasa.gov and other sites. If looking in Space.com it would be 9 weeks, "The laser communication system that we're talking about is 40 times more bandwidth, which means that you could bring back that Google map of the complete Martian surface in nine weeks instead of nine years," However, there are sites that say it would take 9 days with laser communications, one of them is CBS news.There are three different answers for this question, which it is weird because or they don't know what is the time it takes or only one is correct. NASA has already made a test with laser communications. It is very interesting that it was made with the moon in 2013. They  are trying to discover too, what it takes to use this same technology miles and miles away from Earth to see what they will need to change for this to happen.

Also NASA's other idea was to send Spirit and Opportunity -which are robots- to Mars, a great idea if we are going to go there someday. We will know what we need and photos of Mars will help us to know our new home before we go there. The company not only sent those two robots but other ones like Perseverance. As reported by BBC, it was in 2004 that they landed on opposite sides of Mars, but not at the same time. They passed through its atmosphere and then parachutes went out, airbags popped and they landed there bouncing through the soil. It was exactly one of the purposes of the mission to find out if the Red planet had someday water flowing across its surface and Opportunity discovered it. Opportunity found out hematite, that in the majority of times forms in water. Now talking about Spirit, it was with a problem in its front wheels. This injury in Spirit's wheel was good! Consequently, the broken wheel, without wanting, dug a piece of soil which revealed silica. This was one of the most important discoveries of Spirit!

In the world of technology and the hope of living on other planets has made people try hard to go there. One of the great ideas NASA had created was a Inflatable heat shield, it will help spacecraft to land on other planets. It is good because it is like a floater, it fills up with air and then without it. As said by NASA.gov, when being in the spacecraft, it will be without air, then it will not occupy lots of space. Furthermore, before entering the atmosphere of the planet, the Inflatable Heat Shield would inflate and then enter the atmosphere with safety to the astronauts. “During testing, we used a vacuum pump to compress the test article into a small space,” said Keith Johnson, a lead engineer for the project. “We packed and unpacked it and did thorough inspections to check for leaks and damage to the Zylon and Teflon materials. We repeated this three times.” He also said that with the successful testing, they will be able to try to do a bigger one.

How far is our dream of Mars? We all know we are trying to live there, but not everyone knows what effort people are making for this to happen. Not so many people know that there are so many things they invented just for this, particularly me, I thought they were only in the beginning of the whole project. Moreover, people need to know what they invented for us to live there. Trying to be on Mars gave many challenges for scientists, Mars has almost anything we need to survive. “His name is Elon Musk, he's the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Now, he actually told me that we would land on Mars by 2025, but Elon Musk is more optimistic than I am -- and that's going a ways -- so I'm giving him a couple of years of slack. Still ... you've got to ask yourself, can this guy really do this by 2025 or 2027?” said Stephen Petranek. No, we are not going to finish saying “We have no doubt we are going to live there” like others do. We are going to say that astronauts are going to get there in a matter of time. Unlike Elon Musk, we do not say three or four years but eight years counting by now, we could be wrong, but that is what we are going to see!