How Long Before People Will Be Living On Mars?

How long until people will be living on Mars?

Recently, researchers at NASA announced that the Mars rover Opportunity had ceased functioning, ending its 15-year analysis of Mars’s surface. The rover’s “death” has sparked renewed interest in the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) that NASA began back in 2003, leaving many people curious about whether it’s actually possible to live on Mars.

In truth, living on Mars is certainly in our future—but not for a long while.

Living on Mars: ETA

:Researchers estimate that the first human to land on Mars will do so by 2040, with others, like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, claiming we may have full-fledged colonies on the planet by 2060.

Of course, there’s plenty of debate around these projections, as we’re still decades away, and there’s just no telling what kind of technology may exi8st in a few years. And these tech advances are crucial to landing on Mars, as there are still several big problems with the planet that we’ll need to sort out before we can even think about living there.

More research is needed

:While this won’t come as a surprise to anyone, researchers simply don’t yet have enough research to making living on Mars viable. NASA is still in the process of sending rovers to the Red Planet in the hope of learning more about its geography, seismic conditions, weather patterns, and habitable characteristics. While the Opportunity rover may be history, another rover named InSight landed late in 2018 and already bears the distinction of being the first rover to deploy a science instrument on the planet’s surface.

And of course, that’s just one drone of many in NASA’s long-term plans. Another rover is scheduled to be sent to Mars in 2020 and again in 2024—each collecting more advanced data on how we might survive on the planet’s surface. But given that we’re still trying to understand how to make it to Mars in the first place, it’s clear that there’s plenty of work to do before we can start talking long-term living arrangements.

We couldn’t land if we tried

:Even if we learned enough about the planet’s surface to make a trip feasible, we probably couldn’t land a human safely on the ground. While NASA has landed several rovers on Mars over the years, plenty of them have smashed into the planet’s surface or burned up in the atmosphere. If we wanted to get a human to Mars, researchers would need to develop a craft about 10 times the size of our current rovers and find a way to land astronauts safely on the surface. (Not to mention getting them back home, but that’s a whole other problem.)

Living with new hazards

:Let’s say we knew enough to make it to the surface and that we had the means to land a human safely on the ground. These barriers to entry are only the beginning of our challenges, as living on the Mars surface isn’t an appetizing prospect for most:

• The “air” is 95 percent carbon dioxide, not suitable for our lungs.
• It’s cold; the average daily temperature on Mars is -80 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Dust storms routinely ravage the planet’s surface for months at a time.
• Soil conditions aren’t ideal for most types of crops.

All together, it’s a lot for researchers to deal with, despite the fact that Opportunity confirmed that there was indeed water on the planet’s surface. Before we can start building condos, we’ll need to find a way around these life-threatening conditions.

Dealing with aliens

:Yes, traveling to Mars means that we’ll need to learn how to deal with aliens.

We’re not joking. While we haven’t yet made contact with intelligent life (or have we?), saucer-flying beings aren’t the only type of aliens we may encounter. Rovers have found evidence of organic molecules on Mars’ surface, the so-called “building blocks of life.”

And while this discovery by itself doesn’t prove anything, scientists view it as an important step in understanding what kind of life forms may have existed—or may currently exist—on the Red Planet. And these sentiments are echoed by those in the know at NASA.

We’re not ready for Mars

When you look at the wide range of problems inherent to living on Mars, it’s pretty obvious that we have a long way to go. However, with all the news about rovers discovering water and carbon-based material, it’s natural to be curious about timelines. Expect to stay earthbound for at least the next 20 years or so. After that, it’ll all depend on what kind of technology we have and what we find when we get there.

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Can Low Gravity Kill Cancer Cells?

Can low gravity kill cancer?

We’ve been sending humans to space for more than half a century now, but there is still so much to learn about how a low-gravity environment impacts our physiology. An Australian scientist has been looking into such matters through simulation studies here on Earth, and with early indications that space can kill off the majority of cancer cells without the need for drugs, is now preparing to launch his experiments toward the International Space Station for further investigation.

There are quite a few studies that have been completed or are ongoing at the International Space Station that explore the effects of low-gravity on living organisms and human physiology.

NASA has previously studied cellular changes of mice and mussels on the ISS to gain new insights into the human immune system and looked into how the microgravity environment can lead to vision impairment. The agency’s twin study, meanwhile, comparing the biology of an identical twin who spent almost a year at the ISS with the other who did not, continues to be one of the more intriguing examples.

But the intricacies of how cancer cells behave in the microgravity environment remains largely unexplored. Biomedical engineer Joshua Chou has been conducting experiments in his laboratory at the University of Technology Sydney to advance our understanding of this, using a micro-gravity simulator to observe how cancer cells respond and the potential reasons why.

“Prior to this research, most focus has been on the genetic expression of cancer under microgravity,” Chou explains to New Atlas. “But no one has looked at the mechanisms, and the strategy of how we are approaching this is to identify the sensing receptors in the cancer, in hope of tricking them.”

Scientists hope to learn more about the behavior of cancer cells by launching them into space

Chou and his student Anthony Kirollos exposed ovarian, breast, nose and lung cancer cells to the micro-gravity simulator for a 24-hour period, and found that it caused 80 to 90 percent of them to die, as first reported by the ABC. The scientists believe this is because the lack of gravitational force on the cells influences how they communicate with one another and makes them unable to sense their surroundings, something they call mechanical unloading.

“I have to clarify that microgravity does affect other cells, like bone cells, that is why astronauts lose bone,” Chou tells us. “But having said that, the different tissues and organs in the body respond differently, and it’s just that we found bone and cancers are super sensitive to the effects of microgravity.”

Why this mechanical unloading effect hits cancer cells harder than most is one of the questions Chou hopes to shed some light on when he launches his experiment for the ISS next year. In the first Australian research mission to the ISS, the cells will be packed into a device smaller than a tissue box and studied within the micro-gravity environment for a period of one week.

“Twenty-four hours before launch, we will introduce the cells into microfluidic devices, they will go up to the ISS and the experiment will be carried out for seven days, but won’t return until after 28 days at the ISS,” Chou says. “Then of course we will do analysis upon its return. But we also designed technologies to study them while they are alive on the ISS.”

Sending cancer patients to space for treatment certainly seems a fanciful idea, and Chou isn’t looking to change that through his inventive line of investigation. The hope is that the experiments can shed light on the specific receptors and sensors behind the mechanical unloading effect on cancer cells, so scientists can design drugs that mimic the same effects here on Earth.

“I see what we are developing on working in conjunction with existing therapies and not replacing anything,“ Chou says. “What we hope is that it will increase efficiency of current drugs to give the patient an added advantage by disrupting the normal function of the cancer. Because if the cells can’t ‘function as a team’ then it becomes easier to kill them.”

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