Life

8: Requirements for Life

The Oxford Dictionary defines life as ‘The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.’ (Oxford Dictionary, 2015)

Sometimes it’s not as straightforward as you might think. Read this NASA article (Dunbar, 2003) to see how complicated it can get!

What do living things need to survive?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Water
• Oxygen
• Food
• Shelter
• A way to deal with waste products

Here is some ideas from NASA about how they provide the essentials for astronauts (Dunbar, 2007).

Refer to the Technology page to see some of the advances being made to help with life support on another planet.

The Carbon Cycle

Here is how it works on Earth. How do you think we might create an artificial system on another planet to deal with our carbon dioxide waste and create oxygen (Medicine Animations HD, 2014).

Decomposition

Microbes are a key part of human life down here on earth and are likely to play an important part in colonisation of another planet as well.

Check out microbes.org (2011) to learn why we can’t live without the bugs all around us.

Research has been done on microbes in space on the International Space Station for years to determine how they function in this very different environment (ReelNASA, 2015).

Teachers: here is a lesson guide that can be used to help students discover the importance of microbes on ecosystems (Global Change Program, 2010