Why was the Mars simulation base built in Qinghai?

The first Mars simulation base project in China will be located in Hongya area, Dachaidan, Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province. This area has a typical Ya Dan landform group, and its unique landform, natural scenery and climatic conditions make it "the most Mars-like place in China" in the eyes of experts.

The base will integrate scientific exchange, tourism, leisure experience and scientific experiments. The local government hopes to make it the first Mars cultural and creative experience base in China.

Hongya, Dachaidan, Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province, is considered by experts as "the place where China is most like Mars". This area is similar to Mars in landform, geology and material composition. For example, the main landform is desert with little vegetation coverage; Geographically, there are dry sediments in rivers and lakes; After evaporation, there are a lot of residues such as chloride and sulfate.

According to the researcher of the National Astronomical Observatory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, these features are helpful for the comparative study of the environment of Mars and the earth. According to the understanding of the evolution of the earth's environment, we can understand the past appearance of Mars through reverse deduction. He said that many salt deposits were left after the former salt lakes in this area dried up, which is similar to the salt deposition process after the water on Mars dried up. Scientists can study the formation conditions of these salts, and infer the salinity of water in the past and the ambient temperature at that time through the salt deposition process. It is also possible to infer the water flow on Mars from the remains of the water flow.

This field simulation experimental field presents the "appearance" of Mars with a naturally formed Mars-like landscape, so the Mars simulation experimental cabin built by researchers can simulate more invisible "inner". The atmospheric pressure of Mars is about 1% of that of Earth, and the atmospheric composition is about 96% of carbon dioxide. The highest average temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius, and the lowest at night can reach-100 degrees Celsius. The intensity of sunlight on Mars is weaker than that on Earth. These environmental conditions can be simulated and tested in the cabin. For example, salt samples are collected from the field simulation experiment site and put into the simulated Martian environment for crystallization experiment to see if the salt crystallization order on Mars is different from that on the earth. You can also carry out microbial survival experiments.

The planetary science team of the Institute of Space Science, Weihai Branch of Shandong University has made great progress in the phase transition characteristics and spectral in-situ characterization of oxychlorides by using the Mars environmental simulation system. This study laid a foundation for remote sensing, interpretation of in-situ spectra and in-depth study of the new mechanism of perchlorate formation on the surface of Mars.

Through the detection of data, we know what Mars looks like now, and the purpose of research is to find out why it has become like this. There has been a lot of evidence that Mars once had a dense atmosphere and large-scale water, and once had a warm and humid climate. Why did all this water escape and how did it develop into this state? To understand this, we can only reproduce this process through simulation experiments.

Many simulation experiments of Mars exploration have been carried out at home and abroad. Studying Mars can give us a lot of enlightenment: what the future earth may look like. Mars and Earth are "brothers" in the solar system. Studying their similarities and differences is a valuable basic research.