Credit: NASA
Andy Weir’s best -selling story The Martian It provides that by 2035 NASA will have landed three times on Mars, perfected flight flight systems to the Earth and collaborated with the China National Space Administration. Now we are 10 years after the 2015 release of the adaptation of Hollywood and 10 timid years of its imaginary temporal sequence. At this average point, Mars Exploration seems a little different from how it was interpreted The MartianWith more uncovered and more disputes.
As a planetary geologist who works with NASA’s missions to study Mars, I closely follow the science and policy of exploration. In 2010, the United States National Space Policy set the objectives for human missions to Mars in the 1930s. But in 2017, the Directive on Space Policy of the White House 1 shifted NASA’s attention to the return first to the Moon under what would become the Artemis program.
Although the concepts for crew missions on Mars have gained popularity, NASA’s royal plans to land humans on Mars remain fragile. In particular, in the last 10 years, it has been robotic mission rather than equipped, which have pushed the discovery and human imagination forward.
Robotic discoveries
Since 2015, Satellites and Rover have remodeled the understanding of Mars scientists. They revealed countless intuitions on how its climate has changed over time.
As close to the earth, climate change on Mars also reflect the processes of the solar system that affect the earth at a time when life was taking hold. So, Mars has become a focal point to investigate the ages of “Where do we come from?” And “are we alone?”
The opportunity, curiosity and perseverance have pushed dozens of miles that study stratified rock formations that act as records from the past of Mars. By studying sedimentary layers – rock formations stacked like layers of a cake – planetary geologists have put together a lively history of environmental change that diminishes what the earth is experiencing.
Mars was once a world of volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and fluid rivers, an environment no different from the first land. Then his nucleus has cooled, his magnetic field falter and his atmosphere moved away. The exposed surface of the planet has maintained the signs of these processes since then in the form of landscape models, sequences of sediments with layers and mineral mixtures.
Arabia earth
A scientific survey focus in the last 10 years is particularly relevant for the setting of The Martian But he cannot receive mention in history. To reach his best survival possibilities, the protagonist Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, must cross a vast, dusty and crater in crater of Mars known as Arabia Terra.
In 2022 and 2023, I, together with the colleagues of Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University, published detailed analyzes of the strata materials using the images of the orbiters of Recogenica Mars and the Satellites of Odyssey Mars.
Using the infrared images and measuring the size of the characteristics of the surface, we have connected more deposits to strata to the same episodes of training and we learned more on the widespread dilapidated nature of the soil seen there today. Since the water tends to cement the rock closely together, that loose material indicates that about 3.5 billion years ago, that area had a climate of drying.
To simplify the discussions on this area, we even worked with the international astronomical union to mention some previously nameless craters who have been mentioned in history. For example, one that Watney would have guided to the right is now called Kozova Crater, after a city in Ukraine.
More to explore
Despite the rapid progress in the science of Mars, many unknowns remain. Scientists are not yet sure of the precise eras, the atmospheric conditions and the possible signatures of the life associated with each of the different types of rock observed on the surface.
For example, Perseverance Rover has recently practiced and analyzed a unique set of rocks that host organic carbon compounds. Organic compounds act as constitutive elements of life, but more detailed analyzes are needed to determine whether these specific rocks once hosted a microbial life.
The return mission of the champion Mars in development aims to answer these basic suspended questions by offering the first more unchanged fragments of another world on Earth. The Rover Perseverance is already memorizing in the cache rock and soil samples, including those that host organic compounds, in sealed pipes. A Future Lander will therefore have to collect and launch cache on earth.
Once at home, researchers can examine these materials with more sensitive tools than anything that can be piloted on a space vehicle. Scientists intend to learn much more about habitability, geological history and on the presence of any signs of life on Mars through the campaign to return the sample that by sending humans to the surface.
This perspective is the reason why the NASA, the European Space Agency and others have invested about $ 30 billion in robotic exploration of Mars since the 1960s. The Payoff was disconcerting: that work triggered rapid technological progress in robotics, telecommunications and material sciences. For example, the Matction Mission technology has brought better sutures for heart surgery and cars that can drive themselves.
He also strengthened the state of NASA and the United States as bastions of modern explorations and technology; And he inspired millions of students to take an interest in scientific fields.
Call the Red Planet at home?
The colonization of Mars has a seductive charm. It is difficult not to cheer on the indomitable human spirit while looking at Watney’s dust storms, oxygen deficiency and the scarcity of food at over 140 million miles from the rescue.
Much of the momentum towards the colonization of Mars is now linked to Spacex and his CEO Elon Musk, whose declared declared to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” has become a sort of gathering cry. But while the colonization of Mars is romantic on paper, it is extremely difficult to realize actually and many critics have questioned the feasibility of a home in Mars as a refuge far from the earth.
Now, with NASA potentially in the face of a reduction of almost 50 % to its scientific budget, the United States risk dissolving its portfolio of planetan sciences and robotic operations, including sample performance.
However, President Donald Trump and Musk have pushed for the exploration of the human space to continue in some way to progress, despite the proposed-fine cuts to date, which put a strain on the robotic programs and led by science that have supported all the exploration of Mars.
However, it is these programs that have produced more rich intuitions of humanity in the red planet and have given both scientists and narrators such as Andy Weir the Foundation to imagine how it should be standing on the surface of Mars.
Ari Koeppel is a post -praised scientist in the earth and planetary science at Dartmouth College. Koeppel receives funding from NASA.
This article is republished by The conversation Under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
