Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center

episode 279. Welcome to Mars. I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today. On this podcast,

we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts, all to let you know what's

going on in human spaceflight. We are continuing with a reboot of our series that outlines a human

mission to and from the Red Planet. The ninth episode describes the Mars environment, terrain,

weather, atmosphere, and more that humans will face while living on the Red Planet. This

episode was recorded on December 14th, 2020. Let's get started.

What is it about Mars that makes a human mission so challenging? So on this episode, we're exploring

the geology, the weather, the atmospheric pressure, the environment that humans can be expected

to live in for a human mission to Mars. Joining us to discuss the planetary science of Mars is Dr. Paul

Niles, planetary geologist and analytical geochemist based at NASA's Johnson Space Center. You want to

know all about Mars? This is your guy. So let's get right into it. What you need to know about the

Red Planet on your next visit with Dr. Paul Niles. Enjoy.

Dr. Paul Niles, thanks so much for coming on Houston. We have a podcast today.

Great to be here.

Hey, so this is all about the Red Planet itself. We've been doing this series called Mars Monthly,

really taking a journey on a human mission to Mars from basically launching off of planet Earth.

Everything it takes to rendezvous with planet Earth, sorry, with Mars, and then everything about

the journey along the way. We've even addressed what it's like to land on Mars and even live on Mars.

But this, we're going to take a step back from the human side of things, definitely considering it

as we're going through some of these different aspects. But today we're going to focus on the geology,

the weather. So if you were going to visit Mars, this was your vacation. Let's just call it

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