Best home identified for first Martian colonists

SPACE Scientists and science-fiction writers have long suggested that the safest place to build a base on Mars might be in lava tunnels created by volcanoes that are now extinct.

Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a magnetic field that protects against radiation. So anyone going to live on Mars will require some other protection, and according to scientists from the Center for Planetary Science in the US, the solution could be to go underground. Lava tunnels are a possibility – as depicted in Ron Howard’s 2016 sci-fi/doc series ‘Mars’. Scientists have scrutinised close-up images of Mars and have found evidence that partly collapsed tunnels exist near several extinct volcanoes.

But the very best location would be in areas of the Red Planet already less affected by radiation. In this regard scientists have suggested the great plain of Hellas Planitia in the southern hemisphere, one of the lowest-lying areas on the planet, so that radiation must pass through more of Mars’ atmosphere before it strikes the surface, reducing radiation levels by 50%. That’s still too high – 25% more than levels encountered by astronauts on the International Space Station