Lets suppose you were an astronaut who just landed onthe planet Mars.
What would you better survive?
For starters, heres a short list: Water, food, shelter and oxygen.
Oxygen is in the air we breathe here on Earth.
Plants and some kinds of bacteria provide it for us.
But oxygen is not the only gas in the Earths atmosphere.
Its not even the most abundant.
In fact, only 21% of our air is made up of oxygen.
Almost all the rest is nitrogen about 78%.
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But your body uses only the oxygen; you get rid of the rest when you exhale.
NASAs Perseverance Mars rover captured this image of the bleak and barren Martian landscape.
To put it another way, theres 99% less air on Mars than on Earth.
Thats partly becauseMarsis about half the size of Earth.
Its gravity isnt strong enough to keep atmospheric gases from escaping intospace.
And the most abundant gas in that thin air is carbon dioxide.
For people on Earth, thats 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!
Life without oxygen
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.
Without question, Mars is an extreme environment.
And its not just the air.
But plenty of organisms on Earthsurvive extreme environments.
Many of those places have extremely hot or cold temperatures, almost no water and little to no oxygen.
Thats one of the goals ofNASAs Mars Perseverance rover mission to look for signs of ancient Martian life.
On the 198th day of its mission, NASAs Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie.
But even with homegrown oxygen, astronauts will still need a spacesuit.
Right now, NASA is working on the new technologies needed tosend humans to Mars.
That could happen in the next decade, perhaps sometime during the late 2030s.
By then, youll be an adult and maybe one of the first to take a step on Mars.
