The Challenges Foreseen With Colonizing Mars

NASA and SpaceX eventually made a remarkable achievement on the 30th of June as they sent astronauts to the Dock at the International Space Station but this isn’t the goal for the Decade. NASA, SpaceX and other Space companies plan to find a new home for humans outside our planet. The plan has been to either start live on the Moon or on Mars, as it is visible that the earth is becoming overpopulated and our resources are depleting gradually. Although asteroids mining for resources are also another plan, moving humans to another galaxy is what the agency is planning to do. The moon has been visited by humans and there have been several missions to the moon but this missions were for research purposes and it is NASA do not see it as a good place to start a colony. SpaceX had had the vision of putting humans on Mars and it looks like among the private space companies, SpaceX is doing real well.

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Getting to Mars isn’t an easy thing and in other to get this done, a lot of work needs to be done. You can’t just launch people to Mars, it will be a disaster. There are several processes which needs to be carefully followed before Mars can be proven safe for humans to start a major colony. First there will be a setup mission to put things in the right position for astronauts who will be going after. The setup mission is to check if a space craft will be able to land safely on mars, to help secure the region, the use of AI and robots to set up the colony before the first set of astronauts get to mars. If the setup mission fails, going to Mars might be suspended indefinitely until Mars is proven to be a good place to colonize.

If the setup mission is successful, and the first set of astronauts and researchers reach the planet, they will then be faced with challenges like power. Power can be very problematic as running a colony requires light and the relying on solar energy isn’t an option on the Red planet as the sun cloud be blackout for several days. Storms are also associated with the red planet so using wind and hydro is not a good idea since Mars has only underground frozen water. In this case, the major temporary solution is using Nuclear Energy to generate power until a lasting solution is found.

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Breathing is another challenge since Humans breath Oxygen but on mars, carbon(IV)oxide makes up 95% of the air. This means that scientist will have to go with Oxygen enough to use before finding other methods of getting oxygen. They will also need an air tight home and vehicles so as to maintain breathing.

Radiation is a vital problem on Mars as there is no magnetic sphere to filter the radiation on the planet which means the astronauts have to go with spacesuit, vehicles, materials and homes that are able to block radiation as radiation can lead to sickness or death. Gravity is also another challenge on mars, unlike on earth, there is less gravity on Mars than on earth and this could cause health issues with bones and muscles.

If colonizing Mars is possible, it will be a major breakthrough for human as there are other things to watch out for like the fine poisonous sand, growing of food and so on. It may take a very long time to make Mars become a home for humans if we are able to colonize it but it might be worth it.