物理与电子工程学院2019学术论坛之十二
Title: The Conquest of Mars: when Technology is not Enough
Speaker: Prof. Denis Bastieri (Guangzhou University and University of Padova)
Time: 2:30pm, 18 April
Venue: 图书馆副楼5楼报告厅
Abstract：“Mars is the appropriate long-term goal for the human space flight program”. On March 2017, with this statement, the US Congress mandated NASA to take us humans to Mars. Mars and Martians have long since fascinated human imagination, in many languages and many cultures. Mars has become synonymous with extraterrestrial beings. Starting with the observation of Schiaparelli during the Great Opposition of 1877, Mars has been imagined by many as riddled with canals (that is artificial channels) and with its own system of oceans and continents, speculations that not even the Mariner program with its flybys was able to smother completely. It is not a big surprise then, that nowadays, as technology makes giant leaps forward, the question has shifted from whether Terrans will go to Mars, to when Terrans will colonise Mars! Are we ready for it? It is not only a matter of technology! Humans will have to sustain a huge amount of radiation and stay virtually isolated or in close contact with few other individuals for almost three years or possibly longer. How to provide the necessary food, oxygen and water? How will we deal with the inevitable sudden decline of physical performances due to low gravity and radiation? And the psychological consequences of living in a small community of elite people? How will robotic probes, swarms of satellites and AI on board help the Terrans on Mars? Many questions arise very quickly and can get an answer only inside a wide multidisciplinary community, and in particular inside a university, where the students that will help answering them could become the first Terrans on Mars. De
