Julian. Astronaut to marcus k. Is climbing a volcano in lands the rotty in the Canary Islands. He returned from his long Space Mission just a few weeks ago the space agency sent their astronauts here for training the terrain is what is called a planetary analog very similar to the landscape on mars. The french astronaut sees a mars mission as the apex of his career the 6 and a half months he spent on the International Space station i s s were a 1st step towards potentially being part of a crew lifting off of the red planet one day. Humans have to adapt to space travel with closed recycling loops total autonomy drive technologies and the use of robots or novel materials the ideas is paves the way for future missions and puts a journey to mars into the realm of the imaginable. Way or. The op the told. Back in november 26th seen at the baikonur spaceport temperatures have fallen to minus 28 degrees celsius. The rocket is being driven to the launch pad a pretty routine occurrence in the Space Business preparations for the 1992nd soyuz launch. But for to mother scale this mission is the 1st. After 2 and a half years of intensive training he is about to take a seat in the small capsule 40 meters above the ground. These are his last moments on earth moments during which anticipation turns into intense concentration. He joins russian cosmonauts on acknowledged skiing and american Peggy Whitson as they set up for the International Space station i guess. He is the only newcomer on expedition 5051. 00. Maximum concentration youre taking off on a rocket it wasnt quite clear to me what that match your tethered to a Ballistic Missile in the so use your fastened down everywhere only your arms can interact with the control panel otherwise you feel really tied up in the rocket is vibrating in the belching smoke billowed. On nov 17th at 2120 sharp the soyuz rocket lifts off the ground. Its 1000 tons of fuel generating 20000000 horsepower the thrust in the 8 minutes ascent phase is enormous. Tension is high for the 1st 10 minutes after the launch this is the most dangerous time. The earth quickly begins to look like a sphere as the various stages of the launch of bring the capsule up to its orbital speed 28000 Kilometers Per Hour. Days huddled together in the so you are nightmare for anyone who is claustrophobic youre sitting in a kind of cannonball it catapulted 400 kilometers into orbit around the earth. A human strength is to be able to see that is normal otherwise youd go crazy. Right. After orbiting the earth 30 times in 2 days the crew has saw muscles but now the eye assess is in sight. It takes more than 2 hours of intricate maneuvering for the capsule to dock onto the space station. But. There is relief in the Mission Control center in moscow with the astronauts relatives are watching the whole operation live. At the end of opens and are there peggy and some are welcomed by the 3 crewmembers who arrived a month earlier. The orbiting Research Facility has been continuously manned since the early 2000 its where 400 kilometers above the earth they are preparing for the Interplanetary Missions of the future. The idea is this is a 900 cubic metre labyrinth with everything arranged in a manner as precise as it is complex. Its a high to collaborate tree where microgravity turns every notion of them up and down on its head. Newcomers have to quickly learn how to find their way around. Although you know when you suddenly start floating around in weightlessness you can feel your own disorientation your organs of balance are out of kilter everything is distorted. Your stomach feels full because everything in it is clouding. Your head hurts it feels bloated because of the High Pressure in your brain busy. These are the 1st symptoms but they disappear very quickly. At least thats how it was with me so i was very lucky. Humans are not adapted to life in space our anatomy and metabolism are geared to earthly gravity. Without gravity the blood migrates from the lower to the other part of the body creating a vascular overpressure the can damage the organs this phenomenon is still an obstacle to long term missions. In france the c. And e. F. Snatching will center for space studies is looking closely at the issue. Professor philip albay and to my pisk a have devised a new experiment for the i s s. R bay has headed and number of Research Programs at the institute of space medicine and physio. All maydays here volunteers red impermeable fabric are immersed in water filled tends this socalled dry in the years that is currently the primary method available for studying the effects of microgravity on the human body down and. Sit down bore 1000000 to simulate its a good way of simulating the effects of microgravity on fluid transport in the 1st 3 hours was the conditions in space that reproduced exactly. Stagnation in the blood vessels the problem of the brain in the eyes and the 1st this shows the devastating symptoms that can occur when bodily fluids move upwards which is the case in space. We now know that over pressure can also cause the bessel walls to age as much in 6 months in space as in 30 years for a normal person on earth. The nasa astronaut students find that funny at all theyre not really jokesters anyway just reward you can make up for 6 months but we dont know if anything beyond that is reversible. Me i played. During the 6 months on the i assess the crew was confronted with another central problem of long term flights a psychological one. Let us form a cosmonaut Canady Padalka thing even in spaceflight circles but deltas considered an extraterrestrial hes a legend who has lived in space longer than anyone else so far. On 5 Space Missions he managed a total of 879. 00 days of weightlessness thats 2 and a half years in other words the estimated duration of a journey to mars small charges which wearable 12 millard ever be possible for humans to live and work on outer space. Over the last 50 years countless experiments have been carried out and more experience has been gained with the trials that it was almost in use with human organism has become more resistant to the aggressive conditions in space for some of the crew members psychological compatibility is the greatest challenge or. Your ideal crew or cosmonaut doesnt exist and never will were not robots when your old. One you want to hold will do that which well you cant just slam the door between yourself and your colleagues with and the crew is damaged to find a common language and make compromises. Is exactly the right word of this case. Over 400. 00 as journalists have now been on all. Between the space station since the 1st one was launched in 1971 the personal selection criteria for long term flights have been honed. But no one knows yes what a group flying 2 months would ideally look like. While living our must see for apollo vehicle you fly to mars we must learn to survive in space for the long term its easy as if we do it close to the earth which is why the ai s. S. Is a stage on the way. Its not just a research station divorced from the mars project. A good 50 percent of what happens on the i s s is about sending people even further into space. Where you dont print while called on express. Even further into space today everyone thinks of months when they hear that. Some parts of the earths share features with the red planet. Decades of intensive volcanic activity on the lanza right in the Canary Islands have given its a geology that is similar to that of mons. Geologist child hunt carol is often drawn to the island as an expert on the red planet he advises nasa. He is also an important figure in the Months Society and International Association of scientists engineers astronauts and aerospace officials. All of them advocates a journey to monster. I just ask yourself people are not going to mars reflects our profound urge to explore its in our genes let me spire the discovery of america and the other planets. And we also want to find out about the origin of life. As most of the american thought only happened on earth with a chance if you. In a 1000000000 years or was it a process that happens naturally. I know that there was liquid water on mars in the past because weve seen the remains of lakes i recall the still dark but see i think one shouldnt live forever isnt there to like maybe we can find the missing link between inanimate mineral matter and the 1st cells there let out of the miracle of life come about. Mars may give us the answer but it. Is undoubtedly fascinating but can we really send people how is that supposed to work. Throughout the m. R. I. As it is about 227000000 kilometers from the sun. Whereas the earth is 150000000. Orbit the sun so the path to mars isnt a Straight Line but occur and i can orbit. Mars is hundreds of millions of kilometers away 200 times as far as the moon these are completely different dimensions sit at. The most optimistic forecast estimates the voyage to mars and back would take about 640. 00 days 6 months with the outbound flights a month on site and 15 months home. Where travel to mars we need of course a rocket or conventional chemical propulsion engines are pretty advanced the fuel is burned with oxygen to give maximum thrust this will enable us to fly to mars in 6 months. In what 5. To. 50. 2 chemical Rocket Propulsion projects are currently making up balances nasa space launch system or s l s. Its a deep space launch vehicle with several propulsion stages that could transport 4 people and 50 tons of payload to mars. The space x. Company with its basilan musk is behind the 2nd project with typical optimism musk has said that 2024 will be to give the colonize a shot of mars begin. The company is working on a reusable launch vehicle and space ship the country doesnt astronauts into space at one go the way the various rocket parts can be reused or recycled is a revolutionary but as far as Propulsion Technology for conquering distant planets is concerned the real revolution is taking place elsewhere. Houston engineers from the Ad Astra Rocket Company are testing their propulsion system. Was the project seems like something out of science fiction. But one of its underlying technologies is already well known the plasma propulsion engine. Plasma thrusters have been around for some years now in contrast to conventional combustion engines they work by heating and i noticed gas to ultra high temperatures and then accelerating its i noticed assamese through an electroMagnetic Field. The speed at the outlet nozzle reaches 180000 Kilometers Per Hour and ensures a continuous constant thrust. This type of drive is already being used for some probes and satellites however it cant generate the power needed to propel a space ship. But this is trying. To change that was. Franklin chang diaz is a physicist and astronauts who has been involved with more Space Missions than anyone else. He flew on the u. S. Space shuttle 7 times for 40 years he has been working on the ideal propulsion system. In 2015 he announced that his calculations show that it would be possible to reach mountains in 39 days. That number is correct. You can do this if you have a lot of power. And thats the horton thing thats where the Nuclear Electric Propulsion comes into play. Chante is calculations involved coupling a Small Nuclear reactor to a plasma engine to generate the necessary electrical power. My interest. Was stored developing a rocket which had all the nice features of the electric blast my rockets. The low power rockets but they had a lot a lot of power and sensual building the equivalent of the Diesel Engine of space something that will allow you to really move heavy massive pieces of equipment from point a to point b. Jan diaz says the reactor which generate the Electrical Energy needed for the past my engine this would offer the autonomy that no chemical drive would guarantee. Chemical propulsion thrusters could still be used to launch and guide this spaceship into orbit where plasma Engine Running on Nuclear Power with them take over. This would considerably shorten the flight time. These are missions that are Game Changing that changes the chemistry of the me of the mission the changes the architecture it reduces a great deal of the issues of human survivability all the problems that we have with physiology with the conditioning of the human body all of those things. Begin to get less less difficult. Time is a crucial factor. Shaving a few months off the trip means less food would be needed. As well as reducing the harmful physiological effects of long spaceflight. Puts months with the 3. Point 4 low like all other things variable we want to minimize is the flight duration it has to be as short as possible so that we need as little logistics and as few supplies as possible because we have to recycle more to achieve this even more than we do at the station at the moment theres still a lot to do in terms of Waste Management will have to grow our own lettuce will have to go without a lot of things but that wont stop us from travelling to mars. Last. Chance have been cultivated on the i s s for some years now including by the members of the expedition 5051 tom are a leg and above all. The program has been so popular with the astronauts that the researchers did away with an agenda and left the care of the plants to their discretion. To shop who says it did so on our own letters made us happy the green spot just for us it is scarce and cherished and cared for and especially by peggy. Obvious but we were all happy about it we watched ourselves grow and on friday evening we ate it it was a morsel of life that took on a very special meaning. Joy a mass that directs the face you program at now says Kennedy Space center. This is a fairly classical project to find out how to grow plants in space and thats ensure the astronauts food selfsufficiency at some point the joy of nasa scientist trained smith have quickly realized that gardening in space has more than just nutritional advantages. Between 20152016 american scott kelly spent over a year with Russian Mission on the i is a. Transmitter that can be constant he sent photos and tweets of his plans. Scott kelly aboard the International Space station. I want to go and check on my. Flowers a girl here in the. Columbus module. So scott when he took care of the flowers was very important for him to take ownership of the flowers in and i could tell he really enjoyed it because it through twitter feed hey our plants arent looking too good would be a problem on mars to my space flowers on the rebound and finally when you got the 1st bloom how does your garden grow heres my space flower he took his flower out of veggie and took it all around spacestation he took it to the coop a lot they had a centerpiece for dinner and most telling involved to me is what i saw scott and me show what their 300 days in space and lo and behold scotts holding gives space foreign to me that tell. Everything how important it is to both me and scott. I think for psychological for morale relaxation and then of course food you know having knows that fresh food is going to be very important having that connection back to earth having that little piece of nature in those very. You know hostile environment where theres a lot about all the plastics and wires running around and theres this piece of earth that they can smell they can touch and finally eat i think it means a lot to them in when we go to mars when the earth is getting smaller and smaller and smaller its going to be even more important to have that piece of earth have that reminder of home the smell of home and then the taste of home to remind them where they come from. On board the i s s how home is only present. Seen from the coop in a penny remix the earth fills the skyline. Biscay never tires of watching the fascinating spectacle. But can you also imagine a time when our planet will no longer be visible from the spaceship. For so many though just while there throughout history we have never lost sight of the earth well just once for a moment when the apollo crew orbited the moon on a mars Mission Earth will be lost in the distance at some point you wont even feel any progress it will be like hanging in between the stars that will be hard when humans fly to mars the great unknown will be psychological to critic all the arguments. To man. Leaves the station for the 1st time on the 13th of january 2017 its his 1st spacewalk. This careful choice. Of the space suit this one is mine its in my size for a suit is like a real mini spacecraft equipped with all systems needed for autonomous survival in the foid of space. Communication devices protection against a vacuum in the heat including the gold visor and an integrated computer control functions are attached to the chest on the. Top where the rest is in the backpack. This is very bulky and heavy but its the price you pay for a walk in space. Before the Pressure Chamber opens tomorrow and commander shane kimbra already. Down to subtle pressure to yes i saw that small of out of air so a quest gets dumped overboard it gets expelled out into space and that at 1300 hours the hatches finally open. The 1st impression is a feeling of heat and glistening lights. To close they gold vines is to protect themselves from the suns rays. They movements are not as certain as they were in the training pool it takes a few moments to get used to this new environment. And. Then the Mission Begins replacing the space stations solar panels. The 2 are finished sooner than planned and are given further tasks by Mission Control before they want to mount a photograph parts of the space station at the window openings you can see the scars left by my crimean. Really its. A weird comeback win. For you. In here and yes every outside mission is meticulously prepared you dont want to mess it up so i kept thinking just watch what youre doing so nobody can say you screwed up things can go wrong because a maneuver like this is extremely complicated i thought so if it fails it wont be down to me. If. You also look around you have to gather some impressions and images that youll remember for your entire life point. To specific busters and to show how it was on a platform above the space station as the i s s was 2 meters behind me my feet were fixed to the platform where you from there i saw the earth as a sphere where you would want to be on the solar array as i could see it turning in the distance it seemed to be rotating like a bowling ball in slow motion beneath me that was really great also. 6 hours of hard work nevertheless the moment to return to the station comes much too soon even though the astronauts worry about making a mistake right up to the last seconds things can happen fast pass here. My biggest worry on this assignment was losing my equipment you mustnt let go even though everything is attached with ropes and small wheels youre always worried. For awhile i thought id lose the bag with all the tools for a minute or 2 my heart was in my mouth. I mean were familiar with all these disaster scenarios but of course we do everything we can to make sure they dont actually occur you dont think about it all the time either keep you from sleeping. One of many lasting memories. As with any exceptional experiences the astronaut senses are in turmoil and they have trouble fixing all of these impressions in their memories. Back in. Session. In the airlock peggy and all leg help the 2 astronauts divest their equipment to mark his scares just completed his 1st space walk. As it works to. Get. The fear of losing a tool on an outside mission is shared by all astronauts no wonder since every piece of debris every object over one centimeter in diameter can cause devastating damage to a station racing by at 28000 Kilometers Per Hour. But. Nevertheless this danger is not the biggest concern of the scientists planning a long term mission. For the earths Magnetic Field protects us from cosmic rays from deep in space and from bombardment by the socalled solar wind streams of particles emitted by the sun. Our magnificent polar lights are formed when the energized particles collide with our atmosphere. But the protective shield of the earths my. Basic field doesnt extend deep into the soda system. Cannot think of one hazard it is radiation on the one hand there are solar storms protons blasted out from the sun and on the other we have cosmic rays are extremely High Energy Particles such i think. They look this weeks as if you know because my crazy at you from all directions you need a lot of material to intercept them before they get the astronauts and damage their d. N. A. You do not radiation is a problem but there are solutions we shouldnt overdramatize it i think this recently that magic. As head of the Italian Space agency and rome physicist Roberto Bettis stunt coordinated a project to shield astronauts from cosmic rays. With a problem and they may start off on that and thats why this problem has never been fully addressed you know this plays in for the until now the Magnetic Field surrounding the earth has kept radiation at an acceptable level so yes thats nice but sadly. Its our best chance us a little more but when we go deeper into space and the radiation levels there are 3 to 4 times higher than it was the so we know that this entails a measurable but still considerable risk of damage its going to have cancers that can shorten the lives of astronauts returning to earth by 510 or 15 years about the change that he took me and its. Simple yet more. Of them if we wanted to tackle the problem of High Energy Cosmic rays mechanically we were unfortunately need 3 to 4 metres of absorbent material such as water this is of course absolutely out of the question it would be far too heavy for use in a spaceship but its that idea that this was turned out it. This space radiation superconducting shield or s r 2 s. Project maybe halfway towards finding a workable solution to the problem. Its idea in itself a simple a force field generated around the spacecraft deflects the rate is similar to the earths magnetic shield but as simple as the idea is putting it into practice is highly complex it requires an extremely powerful yet lightweight super conducting magnets that work efficiently at temperatures of just above absolute 0. At cern the European Organization for Nuclear Research your cheer rossi and his team may have found the ideal material magnesium dipole ride. The said meter superconductivity is contained in these fine wires. Or in some that are more like ribbons. This superconductivity is produced by magnesium dye bora and this material has the advantage of being very light magnesium is very lightweight and it becomes superconducting at a temperature above that of liquid helium. Superior and this makes it an ideal material for magnets to protect astronauts in space on the mall in dallas boss if theres a load off from our. Yard yes. The station has anti radiation armor we even have extra protection in our sleeping cabinets the banks are the best protected places with extra shielding in the event of a solar storm a sudden increase in solar activity or an ion bombardment we flee into our sleeping berths. And i as s. As to know what absolute 60 percent more radiation in a single day than a person at sea level on earth does any here however even this amount is still considered homeless. Radiation levels may be one of the main challenges facing most missions but they are out of this to. Escape dreams a future. That for the engineer is a must landing is the stuff of nightmares this one in 3 missions that has failed so far. I think hopefully one of the biggest problems for a mars mission is the landing because of the rapid descent into the Martian Atmosphere at 5 or 6 kilometers per 2nd with a heavy load for the men at the scene today weve dropped one ton of payload on mars but a man to be a cool way 30 times and we dont know how to do that yet its all said you have to multiply everything in. The heat shield of a small probe it is 5 meters in diameter with a 30 ton or thatll be 25 meters fans were not capable of launching a device with a diameter of 25 meters from the earth into space as a shield like that naturally causes drag and at twice the speed of sound the spaceship is traveling at 2000 Kilometers Per Hour so it needs another braking device and parachutes but in the thin atmosphere of mars parachutes cant do a lot to do celebrate 30 times youd need a parachute with a diameter of 80 meters thats practically the size of a football stadium. And even with his parachute fully deployed youd still drop from the sky like a stone at 300 Kilometers Per Hour it needs retro rockets and they have to keep going within minutes if it goes. Wrong youre dead so everything has to be worked out to last detail. He suppose were still not sure the shock landing on mars is like a game of chess you know there are lots of solutions and scenarios and strategies that we can play through well see which ones i like out of us was. In fact. The gravity on the surface of mars theres only about 38 percent of that on earth so 100. 00 kilo human being weighs only 38. 00 kilos on mars that should be enough for the muscles to work the bones to stay firm and so forth but this is basically only speculation since how an organism will actually adapt to these conditions over a long period of time has never been properly investigated on mars we have to do a lot of sport as were already doing on the i assess if people dont leave the module theyll need muscle training and gymnastics. Physical exercise is an important part of the astronauts daily routine in the i s s every Team Activity as essential as sleeping or eating. In space you just float around there are many muscles that you dont use at all we have to exercise for 2 and a half hours a day to counteract bone and muscle loss theres trio ready. Goodness exercises also help the astronauts relax they prefer to use the Strength Training device specially designed for muscle training in a way to snus which has the added grace advantage of being opposite the. Leaving out takes place under the eyes of the space agencys medical teams Muscular Atrophy can be compensated for quite easily losing bone density is a more serious problem. You. Have us a liver and valerie novikoff study bone loss in astronauts who have competed as missions. I want to share the show you mine your religion were focusing on the d mineralisation of the bones during the roughly 6 month flight as we can see from these graphs the loss of bone density is approximately 7 percent. To give you a comparison the average loss of bone density in postmenopausal women is 2 percent a year she thinks this core is good or normal conditions if you like men show hardly any loss but in these men here were looking at about a 7 percent loss in bone density is what she needs worse in the package but you to me right and it will if these girls are not want to fly to mars theyll have to counter these bone structure changes his reasoning in him but its the thought of what which not. The mission on the i s s is drawing to a close and the crew is torn between melancholy and impatience to finally get home. To marcus kaye takes his camera into the computer for one last time. Its a paradox out in space beyond the earths atmosphere the astronauts are mainly struck by the fragility about mother planets. Climate up here from a distance you see the consequences of human actions with your own eyes you can see how fragile our planet is are you realize its not just a theory its really like that i mean earth is basically just a big space ship with its motley crew and its limited resources we have to look after it. Summer biscay documented the earth for 196 days the 1st thing that catches the eye in his face has its ups and its beauty. But the frenchman has also taken a critical stance on some aspects like growing urban density. Having the chance to observe at a remove a 400 kilometers has given the astronauts a sense of social responsibility. Are all the 2 we have the role of witnesses even photojournalists my message and im not the only one to say it is one of the earth is fragile and we must take care of. My photos make people think about that in the mission has already been a success. Im going to mars the great adventure of the 21st century is to say fox lived that it will take some doing to get it. The International Talk show for journalists to discuss the topic of the week puncturing get this weeks refocus on kashmir one of the most beautiful and most troubled places in the world now india has revoked the regions long held talks on the me and suddenly it all looks old is of conflict so how bad can things get find out on quadriga show. Quadriga 90 minutes on d w. S o s europe. Has a future champions young champions. Meet to verses from 14 countries. They are fighting for the dream of a united church. And they say good idea the best most but i need to stand up. And contribute to something important so come up see if. The book. Of europe starts september 2nd on d w. Play. Play. This is news coming to you live from berlin and cleared for release of Supreme Court says it seized Iranian Oil Tanker is free to go but a last minute legal bid by the u. S. To hold the brace one makes it unclear whether the ship will actually set sail why has the u. S. Elbowed its way into the affair also coming up israel bars to u. S. Muslim lawmakers their planned visit is torpedoed after a tweet. We look at how israel got roped into the president s