A Metaphor Of Space Exploration

Research project

Stephen Hawkings once said “I don 't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.” Space exploration is an important part of understanding the universe, both in a physical sense and in a metaphorical sense. Throughout time people have made astounding accomplishments by studying space and how we can use it to our advantage. Space exploration, especially of mars, will affect the human experience, knowledge, and survival. It is common knowledge that humans have travelled to the moon and sent rovers and ships beyond to places like saturn 's moons and past pluto. The Voyager 1 is the groundbreaking spacecraft this is the first and only to be sent into interstellar space.

To begin with, inspection of the dirt gives us valuable information on one of the three main challenges of living on mars: food. Dimitri Gerondidakia, a scientist at NASA, simulated martian soil using volcanic terrestrial rocks and pig manure. Amazingly, baby worms were able to be born in the “Martian soil”, indicating that one day, crops could potentially be grown in it. Luckily for the potential plants, the local atmosphere has a surplus of carbon dioxide required for photosynthesizing. The problem is the makeshift soil is missing a salt that is abundant on mars 's surface, perchlorates. On earth, Perchlorates are highly regulated because it affects the human thyroid gland, negatively altering one 's metabolism. This discovery could just be a minor setback, as introducing microbes that “clean up the soil” could easily solve the problem. Of course, no solution is perfect and there are potential problems with this as

The sun is a deadly force to be reckoned with. The Earth 's magnetic field and atmosphere kindly protect us from the vast majority of the harmful effects of radiation. But being outside of Earth 's protection for the extended periods of time it takes to get to Mars could prove lethal. Luckily, scientist have already been addressing this problem in order to protect astronauts going to the International Space Station. The simplest solution is water, which is conveniently very effective at absorbing radiation because of its hydrogen rich formula. Since water is a necessity for life, lining the space craft with it would not be a waste, but instead serve a dual purpose. Another option being explored is to have habitats underground to escape