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Exploring the Red
Planet
MIND MAGAZINE | After
conquering the moon and setting a permanent presence for mankind in
space with the International Space Station (ISS) the next step in space
exploration, and the hardest ever attempted, will be to set foot on our
closest neighbour, planet Mars.
Not so long ago, many people believed the red planet was home to an
advanced form of life. Tons of sci-fi flicks, comics and television
shows in the 50s and 60s fed people’s imagination to the point where a
majority believed that Martians could actually be real. But it wasn’t
until 1976, when the Viking probes landed on the rusty planet, that
fiction became reality. Unfortunately, to everybody’s disappointment, it
was discovered that life on Mars was not possible and if there ever were
any, it disappeared a long time ago.
The results of the Viking missions forced NASA to rethink its projects.
After a break of 16 years, Mars exploration restarted with the launch of
two probes: Mars Observer (1992) and Mars Pathfinder (1997). Both
missions were meant to collect a load of information about planet Mars,
using small robots to rove on the surface. Although a lot of scientific
progress was accomplished, the question about whether the surface of
Mars was ever home to living organisms and what caused their probable
extinction remains unanswered.
NASA’s attempts to know more about Mars got another serious setback in
1998 when a satellite (Mars Climate Orbiter) crashed on the planet.
Later investigations linked the loss of the probe to a simplistic
mistake of converting measurements from meters to foot.
Yet after launching so many missions using satellites, probes and
scientific equipment on Mars, NASA doesn’t officially plan a more
crucial type of envoy to the fourth planet of the solar system: a manned
mission: Sending the first humans to another planet.
The loss of Columbia early in 2003 shocked the world and reminded
everyone about the dangers of space traveling. Before the tragedy, the
earliest moment for sending people on Mars was not scheduled to occur
for 10 to 15 years. But still, NASA said – when questioned about the
long-term life of the ISS – that it will be the basis for a mission to
land a man on Mars.
To pay a visit on Mars is a costly enterprise: a project elaborated in
1989 estimated a 30-year delay and planned costs of about 430 billion
dollars! This includes the cost of research, the construction of giant
hydrogen and oxygen tanks for astronauts as well as the cost of several
space ships. Yet, future advances in technology could allow some
slashing of both time and money.
A very interesting breakthrough was accomplished from a simple meteorite
that made the trip from Mars and picked up in Antarctica in 1984. After
a substantial and detailed analysis of the rock, NASA and Stanford
University scientists declared in 1996 that the rock was carrying
fossils of tiny microorganisms from Mars. According to them, the chore
of the meteorite contained crystallized bacteria that came from the red
planet. Today, Mars is no longer sustaining life, but it still has a
light atmosphere and geological analyses tend to reveal that the rusty
surface of the planet was once made of rivers, lake and oceans. Those
factors put together makes it reasonable to think that life was possible
on Mars. Still, is the meteorite really carrying life forms from Mars?
No definitive conclusions were made, and many specialists are contesting
the findings made so far.
Pursuing the exploration of Mars will bring the answers about its past
existence and what made it what it is today. Understanding more about
Mars will give us a better understanding of our own planet. Finally, the
costs and the efforts to complete the exploration of our neighbour are
so great that no country can do everything on its own. To make it
possible, there must be a joined effort from many countries to be able
to push humanity a little forward, to know more about what goes beyond
our world and how it can influence us.
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