Life on Mars would be a mix of rigorous scientific work, physical exercise to fight the effects of low gravity, growing food, exploring a landscape unlike anything on Earth, and finding creative ways to stay entertained in a habitat roughly the size of a small apartment. Whether you’re imagining yourself as one of the first astronauts or a future settler, here’s what would actually fill your days.
The Science That Justifies Being There
The whole reason humans would travel to Mars comes down to four core goals: searching for signs of past or present life, studying the planet’s climate, mapping its geology, and learning how to sustain a human presence long-term. Every crew member would spend a significant portion of their day contributing to at least one of these.
Searching for life means collecting rock and soil samples, drilling into subsurface ice, and running chemical analyses inside a habitat lab. Mars once had liquid water on its surface, and certain minerals preserved in ancient lakebeds could contain fossilized microbial life. Finding even a single cell would be the biggest scientific discovery in human history, so sample collection wouldn’t feel like busywork.
Climate and geology research would involve deploying weather stations, measuring radiation levels, and cataloging rock formations during surface excursions. You’d essentially be doing fieldwork in a spacesuit, documenting everything from dust storm behavior to volcanic rock composition.
Exploring the Landscape
Mars has the most dramatic terrain in the solar system. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano, has a summit caldera stretching roughly 65 by 80 kilometers, with over 1.2 kilometers of elevation change across its floor of ancient lava lakes. On its south flank sits Pangboche crater, a 10-kilometer-wide impact site so well preserved in the dry, volatile-free environment that it looks more like a fresh lunar crater than a typical Martian one. Valles Marineris, the canyon system, runs nearly the length of the continental United States.
Early missions wouldn’t reach these landmarks directly. You’d explore the terrain near your landing site, likely by rover. For context, the longest single-day drive ever completed on Mars was 214 meters, set by NASA’s Opportunity rover. Human-driven vehicles would travel faster, but Martian terrain is rough, rocky, and unforgiving, so daily excursions would still cover modest distances. Surface walks (the Mars equivalent of spacewalks) would be a regular part of the schedule, used for equipment maintenance, sample collection, and geological surveys.
Growing Food in a Martian Greenhouse
You can’t ship enough food from Earth to sustain a crew indefinitely, so farming becomes a daily responsibility. Martian greenhouses would rely on artificial lighting, since Mars receives less sunlight than Earth and dust storms can block it for weeks. Research into crop lighting has shown that by providing high-intensity light for long daily periods, the growing area needed for cereal crops like wheat and rice can shrink by a factor of three to four compared to using lower, more energy-efficient light levels. That tradeoff, more power for less space, matters when every square meter of pressurized habitat is precious.
Tending crops would mean monitoring nutrient solutions, adjusting light cycles, pollinating plants by hand (no bees on Mars), and harvesting on a rotating schedule. Leafy greens, potatoes, soybeans, and dwarf wheat are among the leading candidates for Martian agriculture. Beyond nutrition, greenhouse work has a well-documented psychological benefit for people in isolated environments. Watching something grow when everything outside is barren turns out to be genuinely therapeutic.
Making Oxygen and Managing Resources
Mars’s atmosphere is about 95% carbon dioxide, which is unbreathable but chemically useful. NASA’s MOXIE experiment, which rode aboard the Perseverance rover, proved that oxygen can be extracted from Martian air. At peak efficiency, MOXIE produced 12 grams of oxygen per hour at 98% purity or better, double what NASA originally expected. A full-scale version of this technology would need to run continuously to keep a habitat’s air supply stable.
Resource management would consume a real chunk of each day. Water would be recycled from humidity, sweat, and urine (just as it is on the International Space Station). Power systems, likely a combination of solar panels and a small nuclear reactor, would need monitoring. Equipment repairs in an environment where a replacement part is seven months away by rocket become high-stakes problem-solving exercises. If something breaks, you fix it yourself.
Exercise to Survive Low Gravity
Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity. That sounds fun, and it would be, but it also means your bones and muscles start weakening from the moment you arrive. Exercise isn’t optional; it’s a medical necessity.
Research into movement in partial gravity has revealed something useful: hopping and plyometric exercises on Mars generate surprisingly high forces on your skeleton. Submaximal hopping with even a modest 5-centimeter hop height in Martian gravity produces forces on your legs equivalent to walking on Earth. Hop higher than 15 centimeters, and the forces match or exceed running on Earth. That’s actually more skeletal loading than the treadmill running currently prescribed for astronauts on the ISS, which makes hopping-based workouts a promising countermeasure against bone loss.
Expect to spend at least two hours a day on structured exercise: resistance training, hopping drills, and cardiovascular work. Astronauts on the ISS already follow this kind of schedule, and Mars crews would need something at least as rigorous.
Living in a Small Habitat
NASA’s CHAPEA program is already simulating what daily life looks like. Four crew members live for a full year inside a 3D-printed, 1,700-square-foot habitat, roughly the footprint of a modest two-bedroom apartment. The structure has separate areas for living and working, but privacy is minimal. Crew members conduct simulated spacewalks, grow food, and provide data on physical and behavioral health throughout the mission.
Downtime activities would matter enormously for mental health during a mission lasting two to three years round-trip. Books, movies, music, and games would all be loaded onto digital libraries before departure. Communication with Earth is possible but delayed: messages take between 4 and 24 minutes to travel one way depending on orbital positions, so real-time conversations are impossible. You’d send and receive something closer to video letters.
Creative hobbies, cooking experiments with limited ingredients, journaling, and even art projects using Martian soil pigments have all been discussed as ways to keep crews psychologically healthy. Social dynamics within a four-person crew become their own challenge. Conflict resolution, shared meals, and structured downtime would all be part of the routine.
Sports and Recreation in 38% Gravity
Low gravity transforms every physical activity. A person who can jump half a meter on Earth could clear well over a meter on Mars. A thrown ball travels farther and hangs in the air longer. Flight time during hops and jumps increases significantly as gravity decreases, meaning any sport involving vertical movement feels dramatically different.
Inside a pressurized dome large enough to allow it, modified versions of basketball, volleyball, or gymnastics would be genuinely new experiences. Even simple activities like running feel different: your contact time with the ground shortens in lower gravity, giving every stride a bounding, almost floating quality. If early Mars settlements ever build recreational spaces, the sports invented there would be unlike anything played on Earth.