• Question: What requirements are there for the mission to mars 2030 for a biologist going and what willl the biologist be required to do. I know that they are needed to find organisms on mars so water can be tracked down and split into hydrogen and oxygen. When the hydrogen and oxygen are pushed back together, how does this make fuel for the space ship getting back to earth? i hope you can answer because i really want to know for when im 30. thanks :)

    Asked by alpacasmurf to Nick on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      It would be great to go to Mars, do you want to be the first person on Mars? Training as a biologist is a good way of giving yourself a great chance to be on that mission! They will probably want to take a biologist and a chemist so that they can do experiments on the surface of Mars to look for evidence of life. So if that’s what you want to do I suggest you study hard at those subjects at school!

      Hydrogen is often used as rocket fuel and when combined with pure oxygen it can be very powerful. I expect the plan is to use solar or nuclear power whilst on the surface of Mars to convert the water to hydrogen and oxygen to use as fuel. When you burn hydrogen it releases energy very quickly, much quicker than you could ever get energy out of solar or nuclear power, and in a more controlled way, allowing you to use it to power a rocket.

Comments

  • Photo: Alan

    Alan commented on :

    Good, we need astronauts for that mission!

    Its not known if the first mission to Mars will have a biologist on board, although I hope there is one! It depends on what is found by the spacecraft and rovers there before we send the first astronauts.

    To make rocket fuel, you need to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You then to to cool and compress those gases so you get liquid – liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. When you then pump these into your engine, they rejoin chemically and release a lot of energy, and that’s your rocket fuel!

    The good news is that we’ve located lots of ice under the surface of Mars, so finding it shouldn’t be a problem, an the biologist can concentrate on looking for signs of life.