By: Bryan Li

Future astronauts on mars need to live somewhere. Researchers analyzed caves that could potentially serve as shelters for astronauts to live in.

Shelter on Mars is quite hard to find. According to Nicole Bardabelias, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, Mars’ surface is subject to harsh radiation, meteorite and micrometeorite bombardment, as well as extreme temperature changes. Subterranean caves would offer some form of protection to these conditions. But just any old cave won’t do.

Researchers also had to consider the location, size, and elevation of these caves as well. Caves have to be close to a possible landing site and with an elevation far enough down to where rockets can decelerate and land safely. Crash-landing in front of a great home isn’t exactly desirable.

To choose which caves are best, Bardabelias and her colleagues used the Mars Global Cave Candidate Catalog, an inventory of over a thousand caves imaged by the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They then narrowed down the options by seeing if they were within 60 miles of a suitable landing site and determined whether or not it was below an elevation of 3,300 ft. They also required the cave to have high quality photos. They have to make sure the caves are actually caves, of course. After narrowing it down to 139, the team manually examined them and further narrowed it down to nine caves, all of which extended some distance underground. Since none of the rovers on Mars are close enough to image the caves, orbital spacecraft will have to do it.

Astronauts living in caves on Mars could be the very start of transforming the red planet into another planet humans have conquered. Glen Cushing, a space scientist at the Astrogeology Science Center, says that “It’s fitting that we’re looking to caves once again for shelter as we prepare to explore new worlds. That takes us all the way back to the dawn of humanity.”