Sharjah 24 – Reuters: Astronauts from the European Space Agency trained on Thursday in Spain's Lanzarote island's lunar landscape ahead of future space missions.

This volcanic landscape on the Canary Islands is similar to that of the moon. It’s good field scientist training for future missions, even to Mars.

Alexander Gerst, ESA astronaut, said "The main objective of the course is to do science on the moon, meaning we as astronauts have to go out there and recognise rocks, work together with the scientists on earth to see which samples we need to take, because if you take the right rock samples the moon will tell us, like an open history book, about our own past on earth.”

It’s all part of the European Space Agency’s ‘Pangea’ geology training. It also includes Italy’s Bletterbach Canyon and the Nordlinger Ries crater in Germany.

He added,“It doesn't have erosion on its surface so we can find there rocks that are 3.8 billion years old which are much older than anything we can find on earth. In this archive, if we find the right rocks and bring them home, the scientists can discover a lot of secrets that are important for our self-understanding and our understanding of earth."