How To Make Oxygen On Mars: NASA Plans To Use Oxygen Cocktail To Support Human Colony  

If humans land on Mars in the 2030s as planned, one thing that will be essential to their survival will be self-sufficiency, as they won’t be able to take too much cargo with them.

With this in mind NASA is testing whether oxygen can be created from Martian soil, without having to carry it all the way from Earth.

The innovative method would see bacteria or algae use the soil as fuel, pumping out usable oxygen in the process for astronauts on the surface.

NASA has been working with Techshot Inc of Greenville, Indiana to develop this method in a so-called ‘Mars room’, which mimics the conditions on the red planet.

 It is able to simulate the atmospheric pressure on the planet, in addition to the day-night temperature changes and the solar radiation that hits the surface.

In experiments, certain organisms were capable of producing oxygen from Martian soil – known as regolith – and they also removed nitrogen from it.

More http://bit.ly/1HamIrF





'via Blog this'

If Mars Once Had life, What Happened To It? 

After studying the red planet for decades, scientists admit that there is a great possibility that an impact of a asteroid or comet altered the faith of the Red Planet, compared to Earth, Mars is full of impact craters but that isn’t that strange since Mars has a very uncomfortable position in our solar System, right next to the Asteroid belt. due to this, Mars is constantly being bombarded by asteroids, unlike Earth Mars does not have a bigger moon to shield it against incoming asteroids.

Looking back in history we know that the Earth has been impacted in the past by large space rock and some of those impacts have possibly changed the history of our planet. One of the best examples we know of, is the Chicxulub impact crater located in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico (see image above) which some scientists believe to have been the number one reason for the extinction of the Dinosaurs.

So if this happened here on Earth, would something similar be possible on Mars? On the red planet we find a very interesting impact crater located in the Lyot region, and it is approx. 125 miles in diameter. The area of this impact crater tells us just how powerful the impact was and it could have been one of the main causes why Mars today is just a “desert”.

More http://bit.ly/1Hn5Ymq





'via Blog this'