The person is Christa Lesté-Lasserre.
There are dunes sculpted by the wind around Mars's northern polar cap.
NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Scientists might be able to explore the outer regions of Mars with the help of wind turbine technology.
To live nearer the poles all year round, other power sources are needed, even though solar energy is sufficient. Victoria Hartwick, a researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, says that a group of six people could live and work on Mars without the risk of radiation.
She says that by combining potential wind power with other sources of energy, we open up large parts of the planet to exploration.
Due to the planet's thin atmosphere, the winds on Mars have less force than they would on Earth. Since the 1970s, studies of Martian winds have either focused on landing zones or assessed mountain ridges. The full picture of a region's wind potential can vary considerably over a day, season and year.
The global climate model was adapted so that it looked at Mars. Detailed information about Mars was taken from maps made by the Mars Global Surveyor and Viking missions. As storms vary from year to year, the model created a simulation of the various wind speeds across the planet.
The researchers used a 100 per cent efficient wind turbine to calculate the maximum power that could be produced. The power returns from four commercial turbine sizes were calculated. They compared this with the estimated energy requirements for sustaining six people on Mars, as determined in previous studies.
According to Hartwick, the researchers found that wind energy could be used to replace solar energy in some places.
She says that it was not what they expected when they looked at it.
The strongest wind power could be found along the crater rim. She says that winds blowing off ice deposits in the northern hemisphere were like a "sea breeze".
She says that the most interesting scientific locations are where stable energy resources can be found. Some really interesting portions can be found with wind power and solar.
There needs to be further investigation into the practicalities of building wind turbine on Mars. The use of Martian materials on site could be a realistic option to avoid shipping huge equipment across the solar system. Hartwick believes that this is a major avenue of additional research. The engineering community will come up with something.
Nature Astronomy was published in the journal.
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