Giant sperm bank could be built on Mars to help all-female crews colonise the red planet
SPERM has been found to survive well in low gravity conditions giving new hope to the idea that sperm banks will be built on Mars so that female only astronaut crews can colonise the planet.
Researchers recently tested how well frozen semen fared when subjected to micro-gravity and discovered that it remained at the same quality as sperm that was kept in normal conditions.
Nasa’s chief administrator Jim Bridenstine recently said that the first person to walk on Mars will probably be a woman and this could happen as early as 2023.
A 2017 unreleased Nasa report allegedly recommended that future Mars mission crews should be all men or all women for better team cohesion and to try and eliminate sexual tensions.
The recent study of sperm in space conditions was presented by Dr Montserrat Boada from Dexeus Women’s Health in Barcelona at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Vienna, Austria.
Dr Boada said: “If the number of missions and spaceflights increases in the coming years, it is important to study the effects of long-term human exposure to space and probably consider thinking about the possibility of reproduction outside the Earth.”
According to the researchers, “the possibility of creating a human sperm bank outside of Earth” does now exist.
During the study, one group of sperm samples were put in a small aerobatic aircraft and subjected to micro-gravity.
The other samples were left on the ground.
Then they were both analysed to see whether the sperm DNA was still in tact and if they could still swim efficiently.
No significant differences were found between the samples and the researchers now want to conduct the experiment again but send the frozen sperm on an actual space flight.
Last year, a researcher paper suggested that a brand new species of humans-turned-Martians would evolve if humans did start to have babies on Mars because the conditions on the red planet are so extreme.
How long does it take to get to Mars?
It's not that short of a trip...
- There’s an immense distance between Earth and Mars, which means any trip to the red planet will take a very long time
- It’s also made more complicated by the fact that the distance is constantly changing as the two planets rotate around the sun
- The closest that the Earth and Mars would ever be is a distance of 33.9million miles – that’s 9,800 times the distance between London and New York
- That’s really rare though: the more useful distance is the average, which is 140million miles
- Scientists on Earth have already launched a whole bunch of spacecraft to (or near) Mars, so we have a rough idea of how long it takes with current technology
- Historically, the trip has taken anywhere from 128 to 333 days – admittedly a huge length of time for humans to be on board a cramped spacecraft.
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In other news, scientists ‘fail to find’ alien life in scans of 1,300 stars but say they’re not giving up yet.
Russian scientists complain they can’t get semen samples from space because ‘no cosmonauts want to’.
And, Mars colonists ‘will become super-mutants with cancer-immune skin’ – but could die ‘if they mate with Earthlings’, scientist warns.
What do you think of the idea that all-female astronauts could colonise Mars? Let us know in the comments…
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