Will the first Mars settlers be cavemen?
The researchers narrowed down their list of hot Martian real estate by starting with the Mars Global Cave Candidate Catalog, a massive collection of over 1,000 caves identified by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which could potentially house human astronauts.
They whittled the list down to the best options by finding those within 60 miles of a potential landing site, and below around 3,300 feet of elevation, which could give descent vehicles more time as they experience their "seven minutes of terror" during their journey down to the surface. "Mars has just enough atmosphere that you can’t discount it, but not enough to actually give you a significant amount of aerobraking," Nicole Bardabelias, a geoscientist at the University of Arizona, who presented the researchers' findings, told the, adding that you need "enough space between when you hit the top of the atmosphere and where you’re supposed to land.
The largest of the nine leading candidates has an opening as big as an entire football field, a tantalizing prospect for future space travelers. For now, NASA's rovers are unfortunately nowhere near any of these candidates, which means we won't be able to have a surface-level look for quite some time.
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