A team of nine Catalan researchers will demonstrate that women are also from Mars. The team is made up of Commander Mariona Badenas-Agustí (astrophysicist), officer Carla Conejo (biologist and director of scientific programs at the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, one of the many entities collaborating in the project), the scientist Ariadna Farrés (in charge of safety and health protocols), as well as Laia Ribas (biologist) and Cesca Cufí-Prat (engineer).
Neus Sabaté, Anna Bach and Helena Arias (engineers) complete the mission, together with Núria Jar (journalist). Their profiles and ages are diverse, but with a common denominator: a multidisciplinary experience that will be very useful to them at the Mars Desert Research Station or MDRS, for its acronym in English. The lab is in Utah, where they will work for two weeks.
The Hypatia I mission will carry out 26 investigations. Two examples: the care of a greenhouse to maintain a vegetable garden or a safety chamber to study with guarantees the evolution outside the Earth of a singular unicellular organism, Physarum polycephalum, which has demonstrated "a certain ability to learning". Other research will look at how to create indigenous batteries.
Future manned missions to the red planet (so named because of the color that iron oxide gives it) will need to carry light luggage, prompting researchers to try to find out if they can develop batteries with Martian minerals and electrolytes created from the crew's own urine. "The water there will also be a treasure".
The expeditioners appeared in the dresses of the station, wearing the embroidered flag on the left forearm. The initiative, with a cost of 50,000 euros, has a lot of public and private support. Among others, from the Generalitat, Banco Sabadell or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A second Hypatia mission is planned for 2025 with another team.
The experience will allow them to experience situations similar to those that would arise on Mars, where they will also have to manage a very limited amount of water, ration dehydrated food and attend to hypothetical emergencies (all have received basic health training), in addition to facing eventualities during departures by vehicle from the station.
Despite being an inhospitable corner, reminiscent of the Martian plains, the MDRS is a recreation, without the danger of radiation that real expeditions to the red planet will have or its -63 degrees average temperature. But Mariona Badenas-Agustí and her eight companions will seek the same answers that humanity formulated in this same desert a long time ago.
The natives of Horseshoe Canyon immortalized some strange figures on these stone walls about 7,000 or 9,000 years ago. Those petroglyphs represent the same goal of these nine women: the need to know more and to discover "if we are alone in the universe". Hypatia I (a carefully chosen name) has another purpose: to promote scientific vocations among girls.
