• Question: What would you say after Earth and Mars are the next top 3 most likely planets for us to be able to sustain life on?

    Asked by Jake_Kiddell to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 7 Oct 2015. This question was also asked by XxXxX_FaZe_420_Bl4z3_XxXx.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 7 Oct 2015:


      Sergio:
      Hi Jake,
      after Mars… very difficult pick!
      I would rather not pick a planet but our Moon. That is fairly close to reach and being without atmosphere sometimes is not that bad (better no atmosphere rather than corrosive gases!

      After that I would pick another satellite: Titan, a Saturn moon. The reason is that even if it’s very cold, it’s atmosphere is 95% nitrogen. So it would not be toxic nor corrosive and it would be fairly easy to move around with a space suit! And the surface is similar to the earth one, with seas and rivers. This is a good place to look for extraterrestrial life, so I bet this will be one of the first places where we’ll send astronauts in the future!

      Simon:
      Hi Jake,
      Sergio beat me to this question, but I think there is still room for one more place:

      Europa: Europa is any icy moon around Jupiter. However underneath the ice is a giant ocean of water. With heat being generated from the moons core and the tidal forces of Jupiter it maybe the Solar Systems best chance for finding life like on Earth (even better than Mars), But Europa is very far away and inorder to get to the water below the ice you would have to drill through more than a km of ice!

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 7 Oct 2015:


      Hard question!!

      Perhaps one of Jupiter’s Satellites. Like Sergio I would also choose our moon too. For my third i’m going to pick a wildcard and go for an artificial platform (i’m not sure if that counts though!!)

      You may be interested in this book to elaborate on my wildcard choice 😉
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(John_Varley_novel)

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