Is there life on Mars? What a cave on Earth can teach us
Seventeen-year-old Zahra Ronizi jump-started her dream of becoming an astronaut and going to Mars by joining a simulated mission in a Spanish cave as a crew biologist.
I have dreamt of becoming a NASA astronaut and going to Mars since I was five. I’m moving in the right direction. I’m a 17-year-old secondary-school student, but I’m also a former NASA intern and a crew biologist at Astroland Interplanetary Agency, a company in Santander, Spain, that simulates missions on Mars.
In the picture above, taken in November 2022, I’m standing inside the cave that served as our ‘Martian’ base for six days. Mars astronauts will probably live in caves to protect themselves against the extreme cold and high levels of radiation at the surface. Our home base, the ‘Ares Station’, is about one kilometre inside a mountain in Cantabria, Spain. There’s very little light inside the cave, and I shivered in the damp air, which stayed around 5 °C.
Every day, my crew mates — four young women from different parts of Europe — and I would go on sampling missions. I was in charge of taking biological samples, using the same techniques that an exobiologist would use to look for signs of life on Mars. I had to be meticulous when collecting, storing and examining samples, to avoid contamination. During this mission, I found amoebae, bacteria and cyanobacteria. Who knows what might be found on Mars?
Ours was the first all-female crew to complete an Astroland mission. There’s often tension in groups living in difficult conditions, but we really bonded.
The first staffed mission to Mars is scheduled to leave Earth in 2033, but these things often get delayed. I could be in my thirties when the mission actually happens, which is a good age for an astronaut.
After our mission, some of the participants decided that living as an astronaut wasn’t for them. But I’m more excited than ever, and I’m more confident in my abilities to withstand the conditions and perform my duties. This was a great step for me and my dreams.
In November 2022, crew biologist Zahra Ronizi, centre, and her team mates spent six days at Ares Station, a simulated Martian research outpost in a cave near Santander, Spain.
Before exploring the simulated Martian landscape, Ronizi explained the research protocols for gathering biological samples to her crew mate. They reported their findings to mission control using a communications system inside their helmets.
Ronizi participated in a rock-climbing mission to simulate travelling across the rocky surface of Mars. Here, she attaches her safety harness to the rope at the edge of a 10-metre cliff above Ares Station.
As part of the Mars walk, Ronizi climbed up the cliff wall in conditions similar to those explorers might encounter on the red planet.
Ronizi returned to the pressurized airlock of Ares Station after a three-hour Mars walk.
Clockwise from top left, Ronizi explored the surface of Mars using virtual-reality technology, worked out on a rowing machine during her mission and examined bacteria collected on a Mars walk under a microscope.
Ronizi examined stalagmites and collected water samples from a subterranean lake to search for bacteria.
After her six-day mission at Ares Station, Ronizi emerged from the cave.
Zahra Ronizi is a high-school student in Miami, Florida, and a former intern in NASA’s STEM Enhancement in Earth Science programme.
Interview by Chris Woolston, a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.
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