DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Humans may one day become Mars. This does not mean that we will become green aliens with three eyes and antennae, but rather that we will be born and raised on the red planet.
In preparation for the space agency’s ambitious plan to send the first astronauts to Mars in the early 2030s, NASA researchers are currently spending a year in the US state of Texas in a settlement that simulates the Martian environment, while the European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing for the first flight. Back and forth from Earth to Mars at the end of the current decade.
But accurate Earth maps and local weather data are essential for spacecraft to land safely.
Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (NYUAD) are trying to bring this dream closer to reality with their “Mars Atlas”.
This map of Mars, created by NYU Abu Dhabi researchers, uses color images of the entire planet.
Credit: EMM/EXI/Dimitra Atri/NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
By combining more than 3,000 high-resolution images carefully collected by the United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe, which has been orbiting Mars since 2021, the team created a “beautiful colorful mosaic of the entire planet,” said Dimitra Adri, head of the Mars Research Group. At NYUAD..
“If you look at the history of Mars, many probes have crashed,” Adri said, “because the thin atmosphere makes it difficult to slow rockets down, and even light winds can change landing trajectories.”
“When a probe goes down, it means a huge loss of science and resources,” Adri explained. “But when you send humans, you have to be very careful.”
Understanding daily and seasonal weather patterns will help researchers determine the safest time and place to land, Adri said.
Precipitation is one of the challenges that accurate maps can help solve, but finding the best places for human settlements based on environment, temperature and resources is another aspect they can contribute to.
“If ice is found, it can be turned into water that can be used for habitation purposes,” Adri explained, “It may sound silly, but in the future, it may be more common for people to go to Mars and live there.”
Dust and desertification
Dimitra Adri plans to publish the new maps in the atlas, which will be available to the public.
Credit: EMM/EXI/Dimitra Atri/NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
Astronomers have been mapping Mars for nearly two centuries, and the first map of Mars was made in 1840 by Wilhelm Baer and Johann von Modler in Germany.
But it was Italian astronomer Giovanni Chiaparelli’s 1877 map that sparked a continuing fascination with the idea of a Martian civilization, misclassifying the natural waterways he identified on the map as artificial waterways.
NASA’s Mariner missions in the 1960s and 1970s provided a better understanding of the Martian landscape, including the first images of volcanoes, lava flows, rocky canyons, and massive dust storms.
In the following decades, NASA produced several maps, including one based on the planet’s minerals.
Earlier this year, the US space agency released a detailed, 3D interactive map of Mars.
NYU Abu Dhabi’s map is “the first to use true-color images of the entire planet,” Adri said.
NASA’s Goddard Space Science Institute is now using NYU Abu Dhabi’s map in its Mars 24 project to maintain accurate time on Mars.
JMARS has also integrated Atlas into its database, a publicly available database used by NASA scientists to plan missions.
In an email, JMARS base representative Scott Dickenshead told CNN that the NYU Abu Dhabi map was “created from recently acquired data compared to some previous global maps” and provides “an additional view of what Mars looks like.”
While NASA and ESA’s instruments provide high-resolution data over long periods of time, the instrument used to collect data for the NYU Abu Dhabi Atlas “can observe the entire Martian disk at once,” says Dickenshead.
Dickenshead added that this perspective would be “very useful for researchers monitoring cloud or dust storm activity at the planetary scale.”
Mars and Earth
The new images show details of the planet’s topography in stunning clarity.
Credit: EMM/EXI/Dimitra Atri/NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences
Mars was once a water-covered planet like Earth, and its atmosphere thinned out and became colder and drier, leading to its current barren state.
The planet now faces regular dust storms, which have a significant impact on its climate, including blocking radiation and trapping heat, Adri explained.
Desertification is a growing problem on Earth, especially in regions such as the Arabian Peninsula and Africa.
Adri believed that climate scientists could apply information about Mars’ desertification to Earth to “understand what will happen to our planet in the future,” adding: “My concern is that if we don’t do enough on Earth (to address climate change), “it could become like Mars.”
In the future, Adri plans to recreate Martian conditions in the laboratory to study the behavior of plants.
Mars has a harsh and unforgiving environment, with its thin atmosphere, extremely low temperatures, and high levels of ultraviolet radiation.
Plants growing naturally in dry, salty soil in desert regions like the United Arab Emirates could help them understand how they can survive the Red Planet’s harsh climate and allow researchers to find the best, Atre said. Ways to grow food in space or improve agriculture in the arid regions of the planet.
The research is still in the early planning stages, and Adri hopes to get his first real samples from Mars around 2033.
But elsewhere, other researchers are already studying how innovations developed to grow food on Mars could affect Earth.
About 34% of total human-caused global greenhouse gas emissions come from food production, which consumes large amounts of land and water.
But system inefficiencies mean a third of the world’s food is wasted, with more than 345 million people suffering from severe food insecurity, high hunger and malnutrition.
Limited resources in space mean that food production technology on Mars must be highly efficient, closed-loop, and with little or no waste.
Last month, researchers in the United Kingdom published a paper in the journal Nature Food exploring how controlled ecosystem agriculture in space could provide a “gateway” to the development of Earth-like technology.
Two Canadian food scientists have published a book that says growing food on Mars could revolutionize agriculture on Earth.
Lessons learned about Mars’ geography, climate and atmosphere could help determine whether any of the thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system are habitable or capable of maintaining an atmosphere, Adri noted.
Many scientists believe life originated on Mars billions of years ago on Earth, and Adri believes the Red Planet is the perfect laboratory to explore this theory.
“We need to understand our neighbor,” Adri insisted: “Maybe it had life at one point, or there’s still life beneath the surface. Maybe we have a common ancestry. Who knows?”
“It’s the best way to understand ourselves and where we’re coming from,” Adri said.
