Mars: The new Earth

The China National Space Administration says the country's first Martian probe will conduct scientific investigations of the soil, explore the planet's geological structure and environment, and search for the possible existence of water.

In typically prescient style, China already has a Mars Base No. 1 in its Gobi Desert in the province of Gansu, where fruit and vegetables are grown, all of it in a soil-less culture. Visitors are taught how to live on Mars. The base has nine cabins and a biocabin, which mimics the visionary simulation aspects on Mars – should we ever go, that is.

That's the question the final part of the Design Museum show posits: whether we should even venture to Mars, let alone design for it. In an installation modelling an alternative scenario running over a million years, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg uses a gaming engine to simulate a Mars colonised only by plants (terraforming through planetary engineering to give Mars an Earth-like environment) and not humans.

All of which leaves the eeriest feeling upon leaving. Was Mars, once, home to life of some kind? Was it, pre-Earth, inhabited and subsequently destroyed over time, as is the fate that many believe Earth is facing now? In going to Mars, are we voyaging as a new multi-planet species, or revisiting a place where life, in whatever form, previously flourished and then found its escape route to Earth? Once upon a time…