NASA published last year Video of the Mars rover Perseverance descending by parachute following a 505 million kilometer journey. but who What NASA didn’t tell us was that while its spacecraft was landing safely on the Red Planet, it was throwing heat shields, parachutes, nets, and other “space junk” all over the ancient riverbed.
Currently, Perseverance and the Ingenuity helicopter continue to find permanent “memorabilia” for landing on Mars, and it’s not the first rover to dump its trash like this, as NASA’s Curiosity also passes over bits of trash. own floor nozzle Gale.
Should we scatter our trash on Mars?
Scientists say that “we must, and in the future humans will respect the ‘waste of space’, as the first steps to exploring the planet,” according toForbes“.
“When we study ancient civilizations on Earth, we look through their trash heaps. But these aren’t just trash heaps, they’re artifacts of our first steps on Mars,” said Dr. Bethany Elman, a professor of planetary sciences at Caltech and a Mars rover scientist.
In short, our junk on the planets will be a treasure for space archaeologists in the near future.
“The landing areas for these rovers will one day be national parks when humans finally land on Mars, and the parts of the landing systems and the foam that may have come out when the rover landed will become historic landmarks,” Elman added.
It is worth noting that the current waste will not be alone “artifacts” in the future, as the “NASA” spacecraft itself will most likely stop working in regarding a decade, and it is likely that this will be due to a dust storm, and the rover has receivedZurong” The Chinese have a similar fate, who are now exploring the city of “Utopia Planetia”.
On the other hand, vehiclesSojourner“ And“Spirit” And“Opportunity” The NASA affiliate has been out of business for years.
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Opportunity.
So, except for the NASA/ESA Mars Helicopter mission, everything that goes to Mars dies on Mars.
A futuristic exhibition in a futuristic museum on Mars?
Most of this precious Martian history is covered in dust, and it was made into a Hollywood movie.The Martian“ In 2015, it tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney who is stuck on the Red Planet for a month and travels across Mars to extract the remains of NASA’s Pathfinder lander from 1987 to use its cameras to communicate with Earth.
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From Perseverance leftovers
Since humans haven’t landed on Mars yet, it’s hard to imagine protected national parks and monuments on the Red Planet documenting humans’ first steps on the planet. However, the existence of similar projects on the Moon does not seem far-fetched, because the planet is full of garbage. It is estimated that there is regarding 500,000 pounds of trash on the Moon from cans, cables, cameras, hammers, tongs and bags of human waste, mostly from the Apollo missions.
And NASA’s History Bureau has a full list of artifacts left on the moon, and for good reason.As the moon becomes more accessible to both national space programs and private institutions, it is important that we protect lunar artifacts for both their historical and scientific value,” the list explains.
Since there is no atmosphere surrounding the Moon, traces of the first lunar spacecraft will be preserved for thousands of years.
