Green energy is possible on the Red Planet. Scientists modeled the Martian winds and showed that with competent installation of wind turbines, they can fully supply an inhabited base with a crew of six people.
Sooner or later mankind will settle on the neighboring planet. Space agencies from various countries and SpaceX are working on opportunities to send manned expeditions to Mars and even to build there permanent habitable bases. And the closer this prospect is, the more urgent the question of providing future settlers with energy. As a rule, from this point of view, solar panels and compact nuclear reactors are looked at, but not wind turbines.
The Red Planet's atmosphere is too rarefied, and wind power on Mars is only a fraction - about one percent - of what can be found on Earth. But new work conducted by Victoria Hartwick and her colleagues at NASA's Ames Research Center shows that it is too early to cross wind turbines off the list of candidates for a future base. The scientists write this in an article published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The fact is that some of the most promising locations for the construction of the future base - the circumpolar regions of Mars, where you can find water ice. However, it is there where the energy of solar radiation is minimal, and certainly in periods of dust storms becomes inaccessible at all. All this makes wind generation a very useful addition to solar panels, as demonstrated by the authors of the new work.
The scientists used climate models of the Earth, adapted to the conditions of the neighboring planet. They were supplemented with detailed data on the landscape, weather, the amount of solar radiation and other parameters collected by the Viking and MGS missions. This made it possible to simulate the wind conditions in different regions of Mars, their changes during the day and night, during different seasons. Based on this information, the authors calculated wind energy, as well as the fraction of it that can be extracted using different models of wind turbines used today on Earth.
Calculations have shown that properly installed wind turbines can be not just a useful addition to the solar panels, but in some parts of the surface of Mars can fully provide energy base with a crew of six people. Local winds reach their maximum strength at the elevated edges of impact craters, as well as in areas of high altitude. They are weaker near the poles, but even there the wind turbines are quite capable of powering small, autonomous research stations.