I'm on Mars!

Hello from Mars! I arrived here two days ago, and since then my whole crew has been busy training. Practicing procedures is an important part of living and working on Mars, because Mars is a hazardous environment for humans, and we have to be ready to live there in ways that we don't live on Earth - unless, of course, we choose to live in those ways in order to practice being on Mars.

That's what we're doing now. In the picture above, I'm wearing a simulated EVA suit - we use it when we go outside the Habitat where we live, just as we would have to do if we were actually living on Mars. (EVA stands for Extra-Vehicular Activity, which is just a fancy way of saying that we are outside and doing something.) The Habitat is our home in the hazardous environment; the EVA suit is our second skin (albeit strangely shaped and unwieldy) that allows us to walk around outside.

Why is Mars a hazardous environment? You couldn't breathe there - the atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide, not oxygen, and it is only about 1% as think as Earth. Breathing the air on Mars would be like breathing the air atop the highest mountain on Earth - except worse. We need to have both Habitats and EVA suits on Mars - Habitats give us a place to live, eat, sleep, and brush our teeth, while EVA suits let us go outside and explore things carefully. With EVA suits, we can pick up tiny rocks with our gloves and look at things with our own eyes - with Habitats, we can have a little space for ourselves.

I'll try to keep updating. Teachers, I'm planning some potential live lectures for probably late next week. If your students have questions about life on Mars, email them to me at pmcunio@mit.edu and I will be happy to answer them.