You can experience life on Mars
The Mars Show Home will be opening it’s doors on the 10th – 16th November, and will be offering visitors a glimpse into life on the red planet.
In the buildup to the highly anticipated docu-drama MARS, National Geographic is set to unveil the first ever Mars show home at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. This unique structure will allow visitors to explore our current vision of the Martian habitat that will house our first colonists, an idea that could be transforming into reality in just a few decades.
Based on extensive consultation with Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomers and Stephan Patranek, author of How we’ll live on Mars and consultant on MARS, the show home will bring to life Petranek’s vision of habitats as early as 2037. That’s just fifteen years after Elon Musk’s SpaceX first planned shipment to Mars.
The show home was constructed over several months by Cardiff company Wild Creations, and depicts a dome-like structure mined from the regolith (Martian soil) combined with recycled spacecraft parts – including a double air-locked entrance – which are all designed to protect the early settlers from Mars’ unforgiving atmosphere and freezing temperatures.
The Royal Observatory Greenwich will host The Mars Show Home this November. Photo by Mike Peel; CC-BY-SA-4.0.
DID YOU KNOW? The Mars Show Home is designed to be situated in Valles Marineris, a 4,000km long, 100km wide system of canyons that runs along the equator of Mars.
The habitat will also contain a transparent side section, giving visitors a slice of Mars life inside, as well as a depiction of an underground area: home to sleeping quarters, food supplies, scientific equipment and linking tunnels to other habitats. A small exhibition around the home will bring to life visions of the colony and facts about our future on Mars and the very real prospect of becoming a multi-planetary species.
The Mars Show Home is offering free entry, and will be open from 10am – 5pm from Thursday 10th November to Wednesday 16th November. So head over to the Royal Observatory Greenwich, adjacent to the Planetarium, and experience a glimpse into the life of a space explorer.
MARS
After the event you can discover even more about our Martian future with the thrilling adventure-drama MARS. Set in the year 2033, MARS tells the story of the first manned mission to the red planet and our attempts to colonise it.
This exhilarating space odyssey is interwoven with present day documentary with space visionaries such as Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson explaining the science behind the drama, and how modern-day pioneers and technology will make the colonisation of Mars a reality.
The first episode of MARS, brought to you by Academy Award winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, will air on Sunday 13th November at 9pm on National Geographic.
