Preparing for the Red Planet

Some years ago I wrote a popular fulldome show about Mars called MarsQuest.  In it, we discuss future missions to Mars, and ask the question, “Where on Earth can we go to learn about Mars?”

As it turns out, there are several good Mars-analog regions here on Earth where scientists have trained rovers and practiced for crewed missions to the Red Planet. One is called the Haughton-Mars Project, run by the Mars Institute, in cooperation with the SETI Institute, NASA, and the Canadian Space Agency in northern Canada for several years. One look at this desolate landscape, and you’d swear it’s Mars.

Several robotic explorers have been tested at the site, and a number of researchers have studied the surface conditions at the site to understand how they might be similar to those found on Mars, particularly at the polar regions.

Mars-like conditions can also be found in Antarctica, particularly in dry valleys that might not be too different from similar terrain on the Red Planet.  In addition, the deserts in Utah also provide useable regions to understand conditions on Mars.

Some years ago, when I was in graduate school, groups of us went to Hawai’i to study volcanic features similar to those found on Mars, as well as other terrain called sapping valleys. Tramping around the slopes of Mauna Loa and Kileaua gave us a good feeling for the volcanic terrains on Mars.

You might ask, why go through all this work if people won’t be going to Mars for some time yet?  It may well be decades before we send people to Mars, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at least prepare and train in areas that are similar to the planet. Things will be alien enough there, and any kind of training will give future Mars explorers a leg up once they get to the planet. It’s also a great way to learn more about the alien landscapes that our own planet sometimes hands us.

Such studies are a legacy that we can hand down to the folks who WILL be going to Mars someday. They aren’t us, at least not unless we get a human-to-Mars program going in the next few years. No, they’ll be our kids, or maybe even our grandkids. And, all the work we do today will not be wasted on them.