Could people live on Mars?
Zib answers for ages 8–11, then goes 1 step deeper each time a child asks why.
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Zib says
Mars is a rocky planet like ours, but its air is very thin. It's mostly carbon dioxide, with hardly any oxygen, and on average it's about 60 degrees below freezing. Nobody could breathe out there, or keep warm. So to live on Mars, people would need sealed homes full of warm air.
Checked against What is Mars? (NASA)
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Where would all that air come from?
Mars's air is mostly carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide has oxygen inside it. A machine called MOXIE rode to Mars on the Perseverance rover and pulled some of that oxygen free. In all, it made about as much as a small dog breathes in ten hours. Bigger machines could one day make air and rocket fuel for astronauts.
Checked against NASA's oxygen-generating experiment MOXIE completes Mars mission (NASA)
In Lil' Phil, reaching the bottom of this wonder earns a sticker for Zib's collection.
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