The Red Planet is a hostile place: temperatures can drop below minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere is incredibly thin, and there is no ozone layer, which means solar radiation is also extreme. And that’s not to mention the very real risk of being hit by a massive meteorite. In short, the best place to survive is most likely underground.
Location, Location
The researchers narrowed down the list of hot Martian properties starting with the Mars Global Cave Candidate Catalog, a vast collection of over 1,000 caves spotted by NASA’s Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that could potentially host human astronauts. They narrowed the list down to the best options by finding those within 60 miles of a potential landing site and below about 3,300 feet in elevation, which could give landing vehicles more time as they experience their “seven minutes of terror” during of their journey down. on the surface. “Mars has enough of an atmosphere that you can’t discount it, but not enough to really give you a significant amount of air braking,” Nicole Bardabelias, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona who presented the researchers’ findings, told the NYT. adding that you need “plenty of distance between when you reach the top of the atmosphere and where you’re supposed to land.”
Cave Digs
The scientists came up with 139 candidates that met their criteria, which they then analyzed to make sure they were expanding underground. The largest of the nine top candidates has a span the size of an entire football field, a tantalizing prospect for future space travelers. At the moment, NASA’s rovers are unfortunately nowhere near any of these candidates, which means we won’t be able to get a surface-level look for quite some time. But that hasn’t stopped us from wondering what future dwellings on the Red Planet might one day look like. READ MORE: The house-hunt on Mars has already begun [The New York Times] More on Mars: Researchers Say ‘Conan Bacteria’ Could Be Hidden Beneath Mars’ Surface
