As you might already know, humanity is really stepping up its efforts now to make Mars a potential new home for itself or at least start the process of getting to that point.

Some of the smartest people on the planet have suggested that we should start looking at expanding our presence in the cosmos if we are to survive an extinction level event that might occur any day. We miss asteroids flying towards us every now and then and there’s no telling when our luck might run out.

Then there are things happening on our own planet like rising global temperatures, pollution, climate change and a rapidly growing population that is simply unsustainable and will create a lot of pressure on the existing resources.

That is why it would behoove us to develop a second home with a permanent presence so that humanity’s legacy may keep going on and perhaps one day, even expand further into space.

Easier Said Than Done

Of course, an undertaking this technologically challenging and pivotal will be very, very difficult and it is much easier said than done. So many different faculties will need to come together, so many different cutting edge technology will need to work in harmony to achieve so many little and big things before we can even begin to set up base there.

Right now, SpaceX, Blue Origins, NASA and other space agencies of the world are trying hard to achieve just that. They are trying to solve the thousands of problems, one by one, to help us get to Mars and stay there.

As always, the most important are the basics, like going to and fro, having air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink, magnetic shield for protection against radiation, adjusting to lower gravity and a lot more.

SpaceX and the other agencies are nearing the going to and fro part. Also recently, it was shown that vegetables can be grown on Martian soil and also that there is a presence of water. There are also plans to make an artificial magnetic shield around the red planet.

Perhaps, one of the most urgent and difficult, is making oxygen for future settlers.

Meet MOXIE - The Oxygen Maker

Image Credits: NASA

NASA is sending a rover in 2020 and onboard, it will contain a device developed by MIT called the MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilisation Experiment).

This device will use Mars’ own atmosphere to create oxygen which will then be used for breathing. This involves using microbial life like bacteria or algae, transported from Earth, which would use the Martian soil as fuel to pump out oxygen.

It sounds really sci-fi like but it has been shown to work in the labs and if this works on Mars, NASA plans to follow up with scaled up models to produce even more oxygen and also liquid Oxygen which will be used as fuel by astronauts to travel back to Earth.

Currently the Martian atmosphere has 95.32% CO2, 2.7% Nitrogen, 1.6% Argon and only about 0.13% Oxygen. For us to be permanent settlers on the red planet, this needs to change. Terraforming is one option to do that but that could take thousands of years. For now, this is a first step towards making breathable oxygen on Mars.

Humanity’s Spacefaring Future

It’s a really wonderful time to be alive at this point in our evolution and at this level of our technological prowess. For the first time in history humanity has started to look to space for our future.

Not only for its exploration but to expand out there laying the foundation of a spacefaring civilisation, one tiny step at a time. A few thousand years from now, humans of the future will look back at today and acknowledge it as the beginning of it all.

While many people are skeptic about NASA’s and other space agencies’ efforts to explore the cosmos and try to set up bases on the moon and other planets, thinking that it is a waste of time and resources, I think differently.

There is no reason that we should have an either/or mentality. We have enough people to handle the betterment of Earth as well as expand our species to other planets. I personally feel that it is very important that we do. Becoming a spacefaring civilisation just seems like a natural progression of any intelligent civilisation.