Space exploration has been a long international battle. Space travel is driven by human curiosity, and that has brought science to Mars. Russia was the first country to have a rover land on Mars, and many countries have since landed there. NASA is now attempting to land a human piloted ship on Mars, but not attempts have been made at this current time.
The first rover to land on Mars was in 1971. “The Soviet space program scored a major success by putting the first spacecraft into Martian orbit and even touching a lander vehicle down on its surface. The Mars 3 orbiter returned some eight months of data that revealed much about the planet’s topography, atmosphere, weather, and geology. Though the mission’s lander was able to touch down on the surface, it returned data for only about 20 seconds before it went dark.” (National Geographic) At the time Russia landing Mars was troubling for the United States because we had entered into a “space race” with the Soviets due to Cold War.
Space exploration has gathered a lot of important about the potential for life on Mars, the planets climate and its atmosphere. Scientist assume that if there ever was life on Mars there would have had to have been long standing water on the planet. “While analyzing rocks and soils on Mars, the robotic geologist, equipped with a toolbox of scientific instruments, found hard spheres the size of peppercorns. Sometimes the spheres, nicknamed “blueberries,” were loosely scattered across the surface; other times, they were anchored within individual rock layers. After weeks of meticulous measurements, Opportunity demonstrated that the spheres consisted primarily of the mineral hematite. On Earth, hematite generally — though not always — forms in the presence of water.” (Mars.gov). This is a strong sign for life on the planet.
There are future plans to explore mars with a human manned mission, so scientists say that by 2030 there will be a human on Mars. “NASA’s path for the human exploration of Mars begins in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. Astronauts on the orbiting laboratory are helping us prove many of the technologies and communications systems needed for human missions to deep space, including Mars. The space station also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space and how to protect astronaut health.” (NASA). A manned mission would be helpful because while robots are exceptional at picking up certain things they do not excel at physical descriptions and are harder to maneuver and control. Humans have less of a chance of failing, because humans do not suffer from the same computer errors possible in robotic rovers.
Bibliography:
“Mars Exploration: Exploring the Red Planet.” Nationalgeographic.com. National Geographic, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
“NASA’s Journey to Mars.” NASA’s Journey to Mars. NASA, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
“Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Science.” Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Science. Mars.gov, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
I agree that space travel to Mars is very exciting and primarily based off of human curiosity. I also agree with your valid point that a manned mission would retrieve better descriptions than the robots because humans have less of a chance of errors. Overall very exciting! Great post!
i would like to go to mars one day, and i’m sure many other would too. i agree that for us humans to have a better understating of what is on mars we need to go there ourselves. this blog did a good job of describing what NASA has planned and what is in the future. it was well constructed and overall very good.