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Why should we explore Mars?
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Why is Mars a great place to live?
- Understand the Origins and Ubiquity of Life. The site where Perseverance is expected to land is the place where experts believe 3.5 billion years ago held a lake filled with water and flowing rivers.
- Develop New Technologies. The U.S. space program has been an extraordinary catalyst for technology innovation. Everything from Global Positioning Systems and medical diagnostic tools to wireless technology and camera phones owe at least part of their creation to the space program.
- Encourage Space Tourism. In the not too distant future, wealthy tourists likely will take trips around the Earth, visit space stations, orbit the Moon, and perhaps even take trips around Mars.
- Facilitate Space Mining. Many objects around the solar system are made of similar minerals and chemical compounds that exist on Earth. That means that some asteroids, moons, and planets could be rich in minerals and rare elements.
- Overview
- Why explore Mars
- Past missions, major discoveries
- Future of Mars exploration
In the 1960s, humans set out to discover what the red planet has to teach us. Now, NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s.
Mars has captivated humans since we first set eyes on it as a star-like object in the night sky. Early on, its reddish hue set the planet apart from its shimmering siblings, each compelling in its own way, but none other tracing a ruddy arc through Earth’s heavens. Then, in the late 1800s, telescopes first revealed a surface full of intriguing features—patterns and landforms that scientists at first wrongly ascribed to a bustling Martian civilization. Now, we know there are no artificial constructions on Mars. But we’ve also learned that, until 3.5 billion years ago, the dry, toxic planet we see today might have once been as habitable as Earth.
Over the last century, everything we’ve learned about Mars suggests that the planet was once quite capable of hosting ecosystems—and that it might still be an incubator for microbial life today.
Mars is the fourth rock from the sun, just after Earth. It is just a smidge more than half of Earth’s size, with gravity only 38 percent that of Earth’s. It takes longer than Earth to complete a full orbit around the sun—but it rotates around its axis at roughly the same speed. That’s why one year on Mars lasts for 687 Earth days, while a day on Mars is just 40 minutes longer than on Earth.
Despite its smaller size, the planet’s land area is also roughly equivalent to the surface area of Earth’s continents—meaning that, at least in theory, Mars has the same amount of habitable real estate. Unfortunately, the planet is now wrapped in a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and cannot support earthly life-forms. Methane gas also periodically appears in the atmosphere of this desiccated world, and the soil contains compounds that would be toxic to life as we know it. Although water does exist on Mars, it’s locked into the planet’s icy polar caps and buried, perhaps in abundance, beneath the Martian surface.
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Mars 101
From its blood-like hue to its potential to sustain life, Mars has intrigued humankind for thousands of years. Learn how the red planet formed from gas and dust and what its polar ice caps mean for life as we know it.
Since the 1960s, humans have sent dozens of spacecraft to study Mars. Early missions were flybys, with spacecraft furiously snapping photos as they zoomed past. Later, probes pulled into orbit around Mars; more recently, landers and rovers have touched down on the surface.
But sending a spacecraft to Mars is hard, and landing on the planet is even harder. The thin Martian atmosphere makes descent tricky, and more than 60 percent of landing attempts have failed. So far, four space agencies—NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)—have put spacecraft in Martian orbit. With eight successful landings, the United States is the only country that has operated a craft on the planet’s surface. The United Arab Emirates and China might join that club if their recently launched Hope and Tianwen-1 missions reach the red planet safely in February 2021.
Early highlights of Mars missions include NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft, which swung by Mars in July 1965 and captured the first close-up images of this foreign world. In 1971, the Soviet space program sent the first spacecraft into Martian orbit. Called Mars 3, it returned roughly eight months of observations about the planet's topography, atmosphere, weather, and geology. The mission also sent a lander to the surface, but it returned data for only about 20 seconds before going quiet.
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This February 3, 2013, image provided by NASA shows a self portrait of the Mars rover, Curiosity. NASA's Curiosity rover has uncovered signs of an ancient freshwater lake on Mars that may have teemed with microbes for tens of millions of years, far longer than scientists had imagined, new research suggests.
Once every 26 months, Earth and Mars are aligned in a way that minimizes travel times and expense, enabling spacecraft to make the interplanetary journey in roughly half a year. Earth’s space agencies tend to launch probes during these conjunctions, the most recent of which happens in the summer of 2020. Three countries are sending spacecraft to Mars during this window: The United Arab Emirates, which launched its Hope spacecraft on July 20 and will orbit Mars to study its atmosphere and weather patterns; China, which launched its Tianwen-1 on July 23, and the United States, currently targeting July 30 for the launch of its Perseverance rover.
Perseverance is a large, six-wheeled rover equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments. Its target is Jezero Crater, site of an ancient river delta, and a likely location for ancient life-forms to have thrived. Once on the surface, Perseverance will study Martian climate and weather, test technologies that could help humans survive on Mars, and collect samples from dozens of rocks that will eventually be brought to Earth. Among its goals is helping to determine whether Mars was—or is—inhabited, making it a true life-finding Mars mission.
All of the robotic activity is, of course, laying the groundwork for sending humans to the next world over. NASA is targeting the 2030s as a reasonable timeframe for setting the first boots on Mars, and is developing a space capsule, Orion, that will be able to ferry humans to the moon and beyond.
Private spaceflight companies such as SpaceX are also getting into the Mars game. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly said that humanity must become “a multiplanetary species” if we are to survive, and he is working on a plan that could see a million people living on Mars before the end of this century.
Mars is an obvious target for exploration because it is close by in our Solar System, but there are many more reasons to explore the Red Planet. The scientific reasons for going to Mars can be summarised by the search for life, understanding the surface and the planet’s evolution, and preparing for future human exploration.
- The Search for Life off Earth. Knowing whether or not life existed or exists beyond Earth is a fundamental question in our understanding of our planet, our solar system, our universe, and even ourselves.
- Understanding the Surface of Mars and Its Evolution. Studying the surface of Mars will help us uncover clues about this past, its evolution to its present-day state, and possibly even our own future.
- Testing Ground and Launch Pad for Future Human Space Exploration. If we can colonize and live on Mars, it will allow us to test further human space exploration, helping us to develop better and safer technology that could be used in more hostile environments like those further out in the solar system or asteroids.
- Develop New Technologies. Exploration has always fueled innovation, especially with technology. Many common objects in daily life today like GPS, medical diagnostic tools, wireless technology, cordless power tools, sports bras, diapers, solar panels, camera phones, and the rumble strips on the highway are because of space exploration.
May 14, 2021 · Learn why NASA is planning to send humans to Mars by 2033 and what characteristics make this planet a candidate for exploration. Discover how Mars is accessible, similar to Earth, has an atmosphere, and more.
The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four broad, overarching goals for Mars exploration. Water carved channels and transported sediments form fans and deltas within lake basins in this image of Mars' Jezero crater.
Why are humans so fascinated with Mars? By exploring our red neighbor, what can we learn about Earth and humanity? As we dive into the potential for life on ...
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