IT23 Life on March

Students presented the space travel problems: weight: hundreds of tons / cost a lot: 100 billion dollars / fuel: we need over 730.000 kg

feeding: food to be launched is dehydrated, freeze-dried, pre-cooked or sterilized with less nutrients. Food must be supplemented  with proteins and vitamins. In the future it will be possible to create food with a 3D printer or to grow fresh food in a greenhouse.

radiations: series of different high-energy particles that can cause severe damage to human body

impact on human body : muscular and bony weakening, weakening of the immune system, upturning of the  sense of direction and of the spatial awareness, onset of psychological problems. 

How to reach Mars with human crew:

- Starship: Starship is a launch vehicle, designed and built by Spacex. It is a rocket 120 meters high and with a diameter of 9 meters. It is composed by the starship SN20 spacecraft and the Super Heavy Booster. The structures are able to autonomously return to earth, and can be reused

- Super Heavy: This is the first stage of the Starship system which is used to allow the Starship SN20 spacecraft to escape to the earth’s gravitational field and take it as far as possible towards Mars. This Starship component is fully reusable

- Starship SN20: The starship SN20 spacecraft makes up the second stage of the Starship system, as well as the beating heart of the spaceship that will take the astronauts to Mars. It has an integrated section for goods or people and it is fully reusable like the Super Heavy Booster.

The atmosphere of March: It consists of a thin layer of gas, mainly carbon-dioxide (96%). 

It appears to be abundant with dust which gives it a particular orange-brownish colouring. The atmospheric pressure is 60% of the terrestrial one in intensity.

Due to the extreme shortage of ozone the ultraviolet solar radiations are able to reach the surface and they are lethal to any living form. 

Up to 4.2 billions of years ago Mars, just like the Earth, had a magnetic field that protected its atmosphere.

Ice on the planet: It is believed that in the most superficial layer there could be huge amounts of hidden ice. This ice   might be what is left from the allegedly rife water of the past. There are huge concentrations of ice in the Martian poles. Here we might even find “dry ice”, that is solid carbon dioxide.

A greenhouse on Mars: In less than a decade, the NASA is planning to grow lush plants on Mars. The project has been called Mars Plant Experiment (MPX). Cubesat: The valuable load of seeds will be placed in one of the so-called “CubeSat”, the mini-satellites that the NASA has already launched into the orbit around the Earth in the last few years, to run various types of scientific experiments. Scientists hope to acclimatize some appropriately developed vegetables to favour a human settlement and, in the long-term, to modify the Martian atmosphere, by adding oxygen, produced by photosynthesis. Oxygen on Mars: Today it is possible to obtain oxygen from carbon-dioxide thanks to MOXIE ( Mars Oxygen Experiment), an instrument created by NASA activated the first time on April 20th 2021..

Study of the terrain: on Mars it will be essential to study the conformation of the land and the material from which it is composed to learn more about the planet, its resources and its genesis. Once you arrive on Mars you will need to collect the necessary resources. It is therefore important to know all the types of rocks .

Our students were impressed about the quality and high level of explanations from the two italian students. They discover really new knowledgesabout the planet Mars. Some didn’t know that it will be possible to live there and now know how to stay with different methods of agriculture for example.