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One day, we’re going to see humans living on Mars.
It might sound like something from science fiction, but currently international space agencies and private space companies are vying to be the first to get humans onto the Red Planet.
And when they do, it is hoped that – in the long run at least – human colonies can be established there.
But there’s a long way to go yet, with huge obstacles including radiation, a thin atmosphere, and a lack of food, warmth and oxygen really hampering the ability for humans to make a life there.
Of course, Earth does already have a presence on Mars in the form of the Mars Rovers and Mars Orbiters.
And recent communications from ESA’s Mars Orbiters sent vital information about two huge solar storms back in May 2024 that caused spectacular auroras visible across swathes of the Earth.
But, as a research team report in the journal Nature Communications, the effects on Mars were intense – showing just how challenging life on the Red Planet would be.
As Mars was pummelled by electrons from the solar storm (an increase of up to 278%), the Mars Orbiters were hit by computer errors – but if humans had been present on the planet, things would have been a whole lot worse.
NASA
That’s because, unlike the geomagnetic field and thick atmosphere that blankets Earth and protects us from the worst of the Sun’s harmful radiation, Mars has only a thin atmosphere surrounding it.
This means that their bodies would be receiving the brunt of the solar storm, if they weren’t living in sealed, controlled environments – and, as the ESA’s Colin Wilson explained in a statement, this has huge implications for future Mars missions:
“The results improve our understanding of Mars by revealing how solar storms deposit energy and particles into Mars’s atmosphere – important as we know the planet has lost both huge amounts of water and most of its atmosphere to space, most likely driven by the continual wind of particles streaming out from the Sun. But there’s another side to it: the structure and contents of a planet’s atmosphere influence how radio signals travel through space. If Mars’s upper atmosphere is packed full of electrons, this could block the signals we use to explore the planet’s surface via radar, making it a key consideration in our mission planning – and impacting our ability to investigate other worlds.”
Sure we might have humans living on the moon in future decades, but you’d have to be brave to want to be among the first to try it out.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.