Mars Life Exploration
After seeing many bad possibilities this century, scientists and aerospace engineers have placed human future 's attention on Mars or the moon .
But this is true. Global climate deterioration, environmental crisis, glacier melting, and ancient viruses, regardless of whether they are, seem to have come to you in the 21st century.
melted ice shelf
But compared to the moon, Mars may be the place that is most likely to become a new home for humans.
At first this was just a fantasy. Today, more and more detectors of are heading to Mars , and new possibilities are being explored.
A scientific search of evidence of Martian life began in the 19th century, and initially conducted field investigations on probes through telescopes and then on site inspections to the probes continue to this day.
Although early work focused on phenomenon analysis and approached fantasy, modern scientific research focused on 's search for water chemistry and related biometrics , including biomarker gases in soil and rocks on the surface of Mars.
Surface rich in silica on Mars
During decades of modern research has found that the possible origin of life on Mars is very similar to that of the early days of Earth , which is also one of the high confidence scientists have in Mars.
However, Mars has been in a cold climate for a long time. Due to the lack of plate tectonics and continental drift, the geographical appearance of Mars has almost no change in billions of years.
From this perspective, Mars may be the best environment for life preconditions , even if it has never appeared in life in the past.
As humans know, liquid water is a necessary condition for life, but not a sufficient condition for .
Martian habitability is a function of multiple environmental parameters. Liquid water cannot exist on the Martian surface, but it can appear in trace amounts of water compound in dust particles heated by the sun.
Life Sciences on Mars
Water on Mars has shown in the observations of probes such as Perseverance and Curiosity that there is a certain amount of water on Mars.
They exist almost completely in the form of water ice , mainly under the Martian polar ice cap and shallow Martian surface, with a small amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
According to relevant estimates, primitive ocean on Mars can cover 36% to 75% of the earth's area. In the utopian plain area of Mars, the amount of water detected locally is equivalent to Lake Superior .
also has atmospheric methane detected by Curiosity on Mars, as well as related periodic seasonal changes. The discovery of
methane indirectly shows that the environment on Mars may not be as simple as people think.
Periodic changes of Mars methane
Its source may be mainly abiotic processes, such as water-rock reaction, radiation decomposition and the emergence of pyrite . These processes will produce hydrogen , generating a small amount of methane and other hydrocarbon .
The discovery of Mars is amazing. Perhaps this red planet is really the best immigration candidate in the solar system.
However, scientists have found that in the future, the possible ancient life on Mars may have completely disappeared before humans can go up.
Mars garbage
In June 2022, NASA 's Perseverance made an amazing discovery on Mars.
A piece of garbage is also a garbage made by humans. As soon as the relevant news came out, it immediately sparked heated discussions on the Internet, but soon NASA continued to say that human garbage was the first to board the first time it was entirely due to detectors and spacecraft.
people have not arrived, and the garbage is first released. This shiny object is actually the space blanket that flew out from the detector, and the related debris, and may even be Perseverance's own landing equipment.
engineers said that the newly discovered items from Perseverance should be from materials that control temperature.
In the past Mars exploration missions, many countries have launched 18 spacecraft to Mars and have inspected Mars at close range in 14 different missions.
Considering the various actions of humans toward Mars in the past, martian garbage is completely in line with reality, but now it seems that the situation happens a little fast.
Industry insiders pointed out that there are three main sources of garbage debris on Mars, abandoned hardware, stopped spacecraft and crashed spacecraft.
. Each Mars surface mission requires a module for protecting spacecraft . This module includes a heat shield and provides certain protection for spacecraft to facilitate soft landing.
The rear shell of Perseverance and aerial parachutes
, and the other major source of garbage is the spacecraft debris that was destroyed. Current evidence shows that at least two spacecraft crashed, and four others lost contact immediately after landing.
Since all spacecraft have their own specific requirements, it is difficult to obtain an average amount of spacecraft debris data.
In general, will only increase the amount of garbage in .
spacecraft landing on Mars will discard relevant module debris during the landing process, and the debris of the heat shield and parachute will fly far away with the help of Mars wind .
The spacecraft landing process is a major source of garbage
In addition, the crashed aircraft may burn when entering, or hit the ground at an extremely fast speed, and then fly a large number of debris in all directions.
According to NASA, garbage on the surface of Mars may affect future Mars missions.
garbage made by humans is very likely to pollute samples harvested by rover , and get entangled with related materials, making it difficult for scientists to analyze their components.
In the possible observation of life, no one knows whether this is the microorganism caused by sample pollution, or whether the microorganisms of Mars affect the samples carried on Earth.
Imagine that humans finally collected samples from Mars, but after a series of operations, they found that all the things inside were found on Earth. There is no new discovery in
, and and even related possibilities have been stifled in , which is quite uncomfortable to think of.
sample search route of Mars rover
is actually not just Mars, but many areas of the solar system such as low-Earth orbit, moon, and Venus have garbage made by humans.
The US Department of Defense sensors used to monitor global space have tracked over 427,000 orbital debris or space junk floating in space.
There are more fragments in the near-Earth space environment, and these fragments cannot be traced at all because they are too small.
Now we already know what threat space garbage will pose to human space. With the development of commercial rockets, some people speculate that space in the future will be full of garbage and difficult to travel.
clean up the garbage before going to Mars
planetary pollution
Back to the mission itself, Mars will find life in the future, so it may become quite difficult for .
Because of this source of uncertainty brought about by human garbage, every single evidence is weak for the indirect and dispersible nature of Mars research.
can only provide a complete case process and explanation for life on Mars by accumulating a diverse set of independent measurements.
Some scientists said that weather station can be installed on the surface of Mars to conduct in-depth research on changes in Mars' environment through high-resolution image . Sooner or later, the resulting data flow will appear in signs of possible whereabouts of existing life.
Bacteria in Martian meteorites
Speaking of this, we have to mention planetary protection and interstellar pollution . In the past, scientists have learned that what happens when the organisms on the earth, which have been isolated from each other for a long time, are introduced into each other's environment.
A species that is restricted in the environment may thrive in another environment, and this growth tends to be out of control and cause great damage to the original species.
This also benefits the relationship between planets, and may become more complicated if life forms from one planet are introduced into an ecosystem of completely unfamiliar in another world.
The planet is bad for bacterial contamination
Not to mention that due to hardware contamination , some bacteria and microorganisms have excellent environmental tolerance.
They have a stronger acceptance of Mars than other organisms, and it is hard to say what will happen in the future.
For this type of interstellar pollution, scientists classify it as forward pollution , and the other opposite situation is reverse pollution.
has sufficient evidence that Mars once provided habitable conditions for microorganisms, and although there is no substantial evidence yet, this possibility tends to be higher.
Many bacterial spores from Earth are reached by Mars spacecraft, and some may be protected in Mars rover and the shallow lander on the surface of Mars.
Therefore, from this perspective, Mars is likely to have been subjected to interstellar pollution.
Mars may have been polluted?
Although scientists found in a 2017 study that perchlorate on Mars will have stronger biodestructive power when exposed to ultraviolet light, and even dormant endospores will die quickly.
But no matter what, the environment on Mars needs to be taken seriously today.
Interstellar pollution problem is not only a kind of damage to Mars, but when it becomes reverse pollution, the biggest impact is ultimately our earth.
