Ms Greene says female astronauts, with typically smaller bodies than men, would thus be better suited for an expensive mission to Mars

Most women burned less than 2,000 calories per day, but men regularly exceeded 3,000 calories

She found that women needed much less resources than men

To date, the overwhelming majority of astronauts have been men, with Russia as an example only recently sending a woman to space after an absence of female cosmonauts for several decades.

But the first manned mission to Mars should be all women, a science writer who took part in a simulated mission to the red planet has claimed.

She says that females require a lower calorific intake than men and thus need fewer resources, making an all-women mission to Mars cheaper and more feasible.

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A San Francisco writer says the first mission to Mars should be only women. Kate Greene for Slate took part in a simulated mission to the red planet called Hi-Seas (shown). She found that women needed much less resources than men. Most women burned less than 2,000 calories per day, but men regularly exceeded 3,000

The argument was made by San Francisco-based writer Kate Greene for Slate.

Last year she took part in a Nasa project called Hi-Seas (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation), which simulated a long-duration mission to Mars on Earth.

Ms Greene and five other crewmembers - three men and three women in total - spent four months in a dome on Hawaii, only leaving the habitat in mock spacesuits.

This was intended to simulate what an actual mission to Mars might be like, with the crew spending most of their time in a structure.

On Mars any future mission will be subject to limited resources, meaning any attempt at such a mission will need to find ways to improve sustainability.

And Ms Greene says sending only women to Mars could be the answer, based on her studies throughout the simulated mission.

WHAT IS THE HI-SEAS MISSION? The £620,000 ($1 million) Hi-Seas (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) mission's crew spent four months 8,000 feet (2,440 metres) above sea level in a geodesic-dome habitat on the northern slope of the Mauna Loa volcano. The volcano is a barren landscape, an abandoned quarry with little vegetation that's as similar to Mars' landscape as planet Earth can get. The crew members live under Mars-like conditions. According to Hi-Seas 'communication latencies and blackouts, in close quarters, under strict water-use rules, etc' are part of the deal. The food study was designed to test food preparation strategies for long-term space exploration. Hi-Seas aims to address problems that may be encountered in future space missions by simulating exploration in areas of the world similar to space environments. The aim of the first mission in which Ms Greene took part, funded by Nasa's Human Research Program, the University of Hawaii and Cornell University, was to learn about living and cooking in Mars. The third and latest mission started on 17 October 2014, and will conclude on 15 July 2015. Advertisement

In December Nasa will fly the Orion spacecraft on an unmanned test for the first time. Orion will ultimately be used to take astronauts to and from Mars in the future, but Ms Greene argues that the first mission to the red planet should be composed of only women

'Week in and week out, the three female crew members expended less than half the calories of the three male crew members. Less than half!' she says.

'We were all exercising roughly the same amount - at least 45 minutes a day for five consecutive days a week - but our metabolic furnaces were calibrated in radically different ways.'

She says it was rare for a woman to burn more than 2,000 calories a day, whereas men regularly exceeded 3,000.

Her conclusion is that sending women to Mars would be cheaper and more feasible than one with men.

Most estimates for a mission to Mars tend to be around £60 billion ($100 billion), but she quotes former Nasa contractor Alan Drysdale as saying that smaller astronauts are a more attractive option than large men.

'Small women haven't been demonstrated to be appreciably dumber than big women or big men, so there's no reason to choose larger people for a flight crew when it's brain power you want,' said Drysdale. 'The logical thing to do is to fly small women.'

Ms Greene adds that most astronauts prefer to work in diverse groups of men and women.

'Still, if the bottom line is what matters in getting to Mars, the more women the better,' she concludes.