{"id":75170,"date":"2025-05-05T00:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T00:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/75170\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T00:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T00:48:10","slug":"could-people-breathe-the-air-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/75170\/","title":{"rendered":"Could people breathe the air on Mars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curious Kids<\/a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Could people breathe on Mars? \u2013 Jack J., age 7, Alexandria, Virginia<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s suppose you were an astronaut who just landed on the planet Mars<\/a>. What would you need to survive?<\/p>\n

For starters, here\u2019s a short list: Water, food, shelter \u2013 and oxygen.<\/p>\n

Oxygen is in the air we breathe here on Earth. Plants and some kinds of bacteria provide it for us.<\/p>\n

But oxygen is not the only gas in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. It\u2019s not even the most abundant. In fact, only 21% of our air is made up of oxygen. Almost all the rest is nitrogen \u2013 about 78%.<\/p>\n

Now you might be wondering: If there\u2019s more nitrogen in the air, why do we breathe oxygen?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it works: Technically, when you breathe in, you take in everything that\u2019s in the atmosphere. But your body uses only the oxygen; you get rid of the rest when you exhale.<\/p>\n

\"EmptyThe air on Mars<\/p>\n

The Martian atmosphere is thin \u2013 its volume is only 1% of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. To put it another way, there\u2019s 99% less air on Mars than on Earth.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly because Mars is about half the size of Earth. Its gravity isn\u2019t strong enough to keep atmospheric gases from escaping into space.<\/p>\n

And the most abundant gas in that thin air is carbon dioxide. For people on Earth, that\u2019s a poisonous gas at high concentrations. Fortunately, it makes up far less than 1% of our atmosphere. But on Mars, carbon dioxide is 96% of the air!<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Mars has almost no oxygen; it\u2019s only one-tenth of one percent of the air, not nearly enough for humans to survive.<\/p>\n

If you tried to breathe on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit supplying your oxygen \u2013 bad idea \u2013 you would die in an instant. You would suffocate, and because of the low atmospheric pressure<\/a>, your blood would boil, both at about the same time.<\/p>\n

Life without oxygen<\/p>\n

So far, researchers have not found any evidence of life on Mars. But the search is just beginning; our robotic probes have barely scratched the surface.<\/p>\n

Without question, Mars is an extreme environment. And it\u2019s not just the air. Very little liquid water is on the Martian surface<\/a>. Temperatures are incredibly cold<\/a> \u2013 at night, it\u2019s more than -100 degrees Fahrenheit (-73 degrees Celsius).<\/p>\n

But plenty of organisms on Earth survive extreme environments<\/a>. Life has been found in the Antarctic ice, at the bottom of the ocean and miles below the Earth\u2019s surface. Many of those places have extremely hot or cold temperatures, almost no water and little to no oxygen.<\/p>\n

And even if life no longer exists on Mars, maybe it did billions of years ago, when it had a thicker atmosphere, more oxygen<\/a>, warmer temperatures<\/a> and significant amounts of liquid water on the surface<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one of the goals of NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance rover mission<\/a> \u2013 to look for signs of ancient Martian life. That\u2019s why Perseverance is searching within the Martian rocks for fossils of organisms that once lived \u2013 most likely, primitive life, like Martian microbes.<\/p>\n

\"AOn the 198th day of its mission, NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie. NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/MSSS<\/a>Do-it-yourself oxygen<\/p>\n

Among the seven instruments on board<\/a> the Perseverance rover is MOXIE<\/a>, an incredible device that takes carbon dioxide out of the Martian atmosphere and turns it into oxygen.<\/p>\n

If MOXIE works the way that scientists hope it will, future astronauts will not only make their own oxygen; they could use it as a component in the rocket fuel they\u2019ll need to fly back to Earth. The more oxygen people are able to make on Mars, the less they\u2019ll need to bring from Earth \u2013 and the easier it becomes for visitors to go there. But even with \u201chomegrown\u201d oxygen, astronauts will still need a spacesuit.<\/p>\n

Right now, NASA is working on the new technologies needed to send humans to Mars<\/a>. That could happen in the next decade, perhaps sometime during the late 2030s. By then, you\u2019ll be an adult \u2013 and maybe one of the first to take a step on Mars.<\/p>\n

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com<\/a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.<\/p>\n

And since curiosity has no age limit \u2013 adults, let us know what you\u2019re wondering, too. We won\u2019t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a>, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Phylindia Gant<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a> and Amy J. Williams<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a> <\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phylindia Gant is a student collaborator on the M2020 rover. She receives funding through the University of Central Florida’s NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium. She is a first year Geology PhD student at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n

Amy J. Williams receives relevant funding from NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover and M2020 rover Participating Scientist Programs, as well as through the University of Central Florida’s NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium and Space Florida, and the Florida Space Institute. She is an assistant professor of Earth & Planetary Science at the University of Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[790,27111,794,874,37106,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-75170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-mars","9":"tag-mars-rover","10":"tag-martian-atmosphere","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-oxygen","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114452477028907340","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}