Prepare for life on the red planet with today’s Space Camp

It is day four of Cadbury Dairy Milk Freddo Treasures Family Space Camp and you’re all nearly fully fledged astronauts. So far this week you’ve seen that we can use parabolic flights to briefly experience weightlessness, we can use centrifuges to help us understand how our bodies react to high g-forces, and we have learned about space food and spacesuits. In today's mission, we are going to explore analogues.

An analogue is a simulated space mission, giving crews the opportunity to live and work like they would do in space. Here on Earth there are different types of analogues that are used for space training. We have analogues that represent living on the moon and living on Mars; we have analogues that have been designed to learn more about the human body and how humans react and adapt to their new environment, and we even have underwater analogues where astronauts and researchers live for days.

Astronauts and scientists also use caves as part of their training as caves provide a really unique environment where good communication, teamwork, decision making and problem solving are all key to a successful mission – all skills for surviving in space. Norah and Mark will be putting themselves to the test to see how they perform in a caving expedition at Explorium.

However, before we can all live on the surface of Mars, we need to land on the planet. There have been spacecraft, orbiters, landers and rovers all sent to the red planet to find out more and search for previous signs of life. To land on a planet, you need to consider a lot of factors and Norah and Mark are going to explore these while building and testing their own Martian landers. We also have a special fun at-home activity you can try too.

Here's what you’ll need for our Egg Drop Challenge:

This challenge requires your own unique design, to create a contraption capable of landing an egg on the ground without cracking it. Get creative with materials you can find around the house.

• Egg
• Different recyclable materials from home (paper, cardboard … etc)
• Tape, scissors, glue

You will hear about the preparation needed before sending something or someone on a mission to Mars. Travelling to Mars will take approximately eight months, each way. Today we have a very special guest, engineer Diego Urbina, who has been preparing for such a mission on the Mars 500 analogue. Diego spent 520 days living in a Martian analogue with five other crew mates, simulating a round trip to Mars. While the habitat itself is based in Russia, Diego is going to tell us what it would be really like to take a trip to the red planet.

For today’s make-and-do challenge we’re going to be making our very own Mars Base. Here’s what you’ll need*:

• Different recyclable materials from home (paper, cardboard, cups, shoeboxes … etc)
• Tape, scissors, glue

A trip to Explorium for some caving with Norah and Mark wraps up today's episode. Thanks for tuning in and don't forget to join us again tomorrow for the final day of our mission to space with Cadbury Dairy Milk Freddo Treasures Family Space Camp.