These lava tubes could be the safest place for explorers to live on Mars

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter - Staff Writer 5 hours ago

The Martian surface is a radiation hot zone. But these lava tubes might offer safety.



Curiosity can handle the harsh radiation on the Martian surface. But people can't.
(Image: © NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer)
There's no safe place to camp out on Mars. But a team of researchers has identified what could be future Martian explorers' best possible hideout: a string of lava tubes in the low-lying Hellas Planitia — an impact basin blasted into the Red Planet's surface by ancient meteor impacts.

Every part of Mars could kill you. Its surface is arid, starved of oxygen and blasted daily with unrelenting, unfiltered solar radiation. Any future Martian explorers will put their lives in peril when they embark. NASA has decades of experience hauling oxygen, food and water beyond Earth. But that last killer, the radiation, is a harder problem to tackle.

On Earth, a powerful magnetic shield, known as the magnetosphere, protects us from the harsh radiation of space. Without it, a constant stream of electromagnetic rays would damage our cells and DNA, with dire consequences to our health. Ionized particles, streaming through space as slower-moving solar wind or relativistic cosmic rays add to that risk. And we know from the experiences of the only humans to exit the magnetosphere — Apollo astronauts — that even a few days' exposure to those particles can trigger headaches, flashes of light and cataracts, the researchers of the new study noted in their new paper. Plus, there's always the risk that a solar flare or cosmic ray burst could expose a Martian habitat to a sudden, deadly dose.

There's only so much shielding you can put on a spacecraft or habitat, and even astronauts on the International Space Station accept much higher cancer risk than they would experience on Earth, NASA has said. But in the new paper, that team of researchers argues that the Hellas Planitia lava tubes might be among the safest places for Martian explorers to camp out.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/radiation-mars-safe-lava-tubes.html?utm_source=notification

[CloudWatcher]

1. Years to get to Mars.

So this might help you survive once you're there, but what's the current thinking on just how to get to Mars (and back) without frying during the trip? Seems like that's still a show-stopper.