Women are from Mars too

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. This is the title of a well-known self-help book for couples, by the American John Gray, the standard bearer of the so-called pop psychology. Mr. Gray should have been present this Wednesday at the presentation of the Hypatia I mission, which will allow nine Catalan researchers to experiment a hypothetical future manned mission to Mars in the Utah desert.

Women are also from Mars. The team is made up of commander Mariona Badenas-Agustí (astrophysicist), officer Carla Conejo (biologist and director of scientific programs at the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, one of the entities collaborating in the project), scientist Ariadna Farrés ( in charge of safety and health protocols), as well as Laia Ribas (biologist) and Cesca Cufí-Prat (engineer).

Neus Sabaté, Anna Bach and Helena Arias (engineers) complete the mission, along with Núria Jar (journalist). Their academic profiles and ages are diverse, but they all have a common denominator: a multidisciplinary experience that will be very helpful at the Mars Desert Research Station or MDRS, for its acronym in English (Mars Research Desert Station). They will actually spend two weeks in the Utah desert.

The Hypatia I mission (“I because we want there to be many more”, they specified) will leave this Thursday for the United States. The simulation, which will include important experiments, will begin on Sunday and will last until April 29. The Utah desert, The researchers explained, “it brings together orographic and geological conditions similar to Mars, with large temperature fluctuations and extremely low humidity.”

Despite being an inhospitable corner, which can remind you of the Martian plains, the MDRS is a recreation, without the danger of radiation that real expeditions to the red planet will have nor its -63 degrees of average temperature. But in a way, Mariona Badenas-Agustí and her eight companions will look for the same answers that humanity formulated in this same desert oceans of time ago.

The natives who inhabited the Horseshoe Canyon or Cañón de la Herradura 7,000 or 9,000 years ago immortalized strange figures on these stone walls. Those petroglyphs could represent the same objective that these nine women have now: the need to know more. The Hypatia I mission (a carefully chosen name) has another important purpose: to promote scientific vocations among girls.

Hypatia of Alexandria, victim of intolerance and fundamentalism, was possibly the first great mathematician, astronomer and scientist of our era. The Hypatias that have not yet been born will have references in researchers such as those of the MDRS. These future cosmonauts have far less time between us than there is between the authors of the Utah petroglyphs and the desert scientists.

The Hypatia I project has been presented this Wednesday at the Llotja de Mar in Barcelona. “The dream of going into space has no gender,” explained Commander Badenas-Agustí, the project’s soul mater and who has already participated in another at the MDRS. It is about not only simulating the conditions of a Martian station, but reversing “an unfair situation”: less than 29% of scientific research is in the hands of women.

And that percentage is reduced to 20% in the specific case of space research. No woman has stepped on the Moon and they have only starred in 7% of extravehicular walks. The nine dreamers who will leave for Utah want to show girls that they are capable of anything and promote new female references, in addition to improving the representation of women in the world of science.

Their work will be added to a long list of investigations to lay the foundations for a manned mission to Mars and make Ray Bradbury’s dream come true. Or Ursula Ursula K. Le Guin. Because, as Hypatia of Alexandria demonstrated, women can be anything they set their minds to. Astrophysicists, biologists, mathematicians, NASA engineers… And also authors of classic science fiction literature.