what is the mars essay

Essay on Life on Mars for Students and Children

500 words essay on life on mars.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun in our solar system. Also, it is the second smallest planet in our solar system. The possibility of life on mars has aroused the interest of scientists for many years. A major reason for this interest is due to the similarity and proximity of the planet to Earth. Mars certainly gives some indications of the possibility of life.

Possibilities of Life on Mars

In the past, Mars used to look quite similar to Earth. Billions of years ago, there were certainly similarities between Mars and Earth. Furthermore, scientists believe that Mars once had a huge ocean. This ocean, experts believe, covered more of the planet’s surface than Earth’s own oceans do so currently.

Moreover, Mars was much warmer in the past that it is currently. Most noteworthy, warm temperature and water are two major requirements for life to exist. So, there is a high probability that previously there was life on Mars.

Life on Earth can exist in the harshest of circumstances. Furthermore, life exists in the most extreme places on Earth. Moreover, life on Earth is available in the extremely hot and dry deserts. Also, life exists in the extremely cold Antarctica continent. Most noteworthy, this resilience of life gives plenty of hope about life on Mars.

There are some ingredients for life that already exist on Mars. Bio signatures refer to current and past life markers. Furthermore, scientists are scouring the surface for them. Moreover, there has been an emergence of a few promising leads. One notable example is the presence of methane in Mars’s atmosphere. Most noteworthy, scientists have no idea where the methane is coming from. Therefore, a possibility arises that methane presence is due to microbes existing deep below the planet’s surface.

One important point to note is that no scratching of Mars’s surface has taken place. Furthermore, a couple of inches of scratching has taken place until now. Scientists have undertaken analysis of small pinches of soil. There may also have been a failure to detect signs of life due to the use of faulty techniques. Most noteworthy, there may be “refugee life” deep below the planet’s surface.

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Challenges to Life on Mars

First of all, almost all plants and animals cannot survive the conditions on the surface of Mars. This is due to the extremely harsh conditions on the surface of Mars.

Another major problem is the gravity of Mars. Most noteworthy, the gravity on Mars is 38% to that of Earth. Furthermore, low gravity can cause health problems like muscle loss and bone demineralization.

The climate of Mars poses another significant problem. The temperature at Mars is much colder than Earth. Most noteworthy, the mean surface temperatures of Mars range between −87 and −5 °C. Also, the coldest temperature on Earth has been −89.2 °C in Antarctica.

Mars suffers from a great scarcity of water. Most noteworthy, water discovered on Mars is less than that on Earth’s driest desert.

Other problems include the high penetration of harmful solar radiation due to the lack of ozone layer. Furthermore, global dust storms are common throughout Mars. Also, the soil of Mars is toxic due to the high concentration of chlorine.

To sum it up, life on Mars is a topic that has generated a lot of curiosity among scientists and experts. Furthermore, establishing life on Mars involves a lot of challenges. However, the hope and ambition for this purpose are well alive and present. Most noteworthy, humanity must make serious efforts for establishing life on Mars.

FAQs on Life on Mars

Q1 State any one possibility of life on Mars?

A1 One possibility of life on Mars is the resilience of life. Most noteworthy, life exists in the most extreme places on Earth.

Q2 State anyone challenge to life on Mars?

A2 One challenge to life on Mars is a great scarcity of water.

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What is the temperature on mars, when did viking 1 and viking 2 land on mars, should humans colonize space on mars.

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• Space.com - Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet
• Mars - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Mars - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

How far is Mars from Earth?

Mars is less than 56 million km (35 million miles) from Earth at its closest approach, but it recedes to almost 400 million km (250 million miles) when the two planets are on opposite sides of the solar system.

What is the size of Mars?

Mars is the second smallest planet in the solar system, only larger than Mercury and slightly more than half the size of Earth. It has an equatorial radius of 3,396 km (2,110 miles) and a mean polar radius of 3,379 km (2,100 miles).

Mars is similar to Earth in many ways. Like Earth, it has clouds, winds, a roughly 24-hour day, seasonal weather patterns, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and other familiar features. There are clues that billions of years ago Mars was even more like Earth, with a denser, warmer atmosphere, rivers, lakes, flood channels, and perhaps oceans.

The characteristic temperature on Mars in the lower atmosphere is about 200 kelvins (K; −100 °F, −70 °C), which is generally colder than the average daytime surface temperature of 250 K (−10 °F, −20 °C). In the summer daytime temperatures can peak at about 290 K (62 °F, 17 °C).

The Viking landers are two robotic U.S. spacecraft launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the study of the planet Mars. Viking 1 landed in the region of Chryse Planitia (22° N, 48° W) on July 20, 1976, and Viking 2 landed 6,500 km (4,000 miles) away in Utopia Planitia (48° N, 226° W) several weeks later on September 3.

Space colonization, on Mars or elsewhere, is widely debated. Some argue humans have a moral duty to save our species from extinction, and space colonization is one way of doing so. Others argue that living in space is science fiction and that we should concentrate on improving life on Earth instead of potentially ruining another planet or moon. For more on the debate about colonizing space, visit ProCon.org .

Recent News

Mars , fourth planet in the solar system in order of distance from the Sun and seventh in size and mass. It is a periodically conspicuous reddish object in the night sky. Mars is designated by the symbol ♂.

Sometimes called the Red Planet, Mars has long been associated with warfare and slaughter. It is named for the Roman god of war. As long as 3,000 years ago, Babylonian astronomer-astrologers called the planet Nergal for their god of death and pestilence. The planet’s two moons, Phobos (Greek: “Fear”) and Deimos (“Terror”), were named for two of the sons of Ares and Aphrodite (the counterparts of Mars and Venus , respectively, in Greek mythology ).

In recent times Mars has intrigued people for more-substantial reasons than its baleful appearance. The planet is the second closest to Earth , after Venus , and it is usually easy to observe in the night sky because its orbit lies outside Earth’s. It is also the only planet whose solid surface and atmospheric phenomena can be seen in telescopes from Earth. Centuries of assiduous studies by earthbound observers, extended by spacecraft observations since the 1960s, have revealed that Mars is similar to Earth in many ways. Like Earth, Mars has clouds , winds , a roughly 24-hour day, seasonal weather patterns, polar ice caps, volcanoes , canyons , and other familiar features.

There are intriguing clues that billions of years ago Mars was even more Earth-like than today, with a denser, warmer atmosphere and much more water — rivers , lakes , flood channels, and perhaps oceans . By all indications Mars is now a sterile frozen desert. However, close-up images of dark streaks on the slopes of some craters during Martian spring and summer suggest that at least small amounts of water may flow seasonally on the planet’s surface. The InSight lander found that the region of Mars’s crust between 11.5 and 20 km (7.1 and 12 miles) under the surface is saturated with water. The presence of water on Mars is considered a critical issue because life as it is presently understood cannot exist without water. If microscopic life-forms ever did originate on Mars, there remains a chance, albeit a remote one, that they may yet survive in these hidden watery niches . (In 1996 a team of scientists reported what they concluded to be evidence for ancient microbial life in a piece of meteorite that had come from Mars, but most scientists have disputed their interpretation.)

Since at least the end of the 19th century, Mars has been considered the most hospitable place in the solar system beyond Earth both for indigenous life and for human exploration and habitation. At that time, speculation was rife that the so-called canals of Mars —complex systems of long, straight surface lines that very few astronomers had claimed to see in telescopic observations—were the creations of intelligent beings. Seasonal changes in the planet’s appearance, attributed to the spread and retreat of vegetation, added further to the purported evidence for biological activity . Although the canals later proved to be illusory and the seasonal changes geologic rather than biological, scientific and public interest in the possibility of Martian life and in exploration of the planet has not faded.

During the past century Mars has taken on a special place in popular culture . It has served as inspiration for generations of fiction writers from H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the heyday of the Martian canals to Ray Bradbury in the 1950s and Kim Stanley Robinson in the ’90s. Mars has also been a central theme in radio, television, and film, perhaps the most notorious case being Orson Welles ’s radio-play production of H.G. Wells’s novel War of the Worlds , which convinced thousands of unwitting listeners on the evening of October 30, 1938, that beings from Mars were invading Earth. The planet’s mystique and many real mysteries remain a stimulus to both scientific inquiry and human imagination to this day.

Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet

Mars is one of the most explored bodies in our solar system, here's why.

Why is Mars called the Red Planet?

Mars q&a with an expert, mars' surface, mars' moons.

• Quick facts

Mars' polar caps

Mars' climate, mars missions and research, future human missions, additional resources.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and has a distinct rusty red appearance and two unusual moons. 

The Red Planet is a cold, desert world within our solar system . It has a very thin atmosphere, but the dusty, lifeless (as far as we know it) planet is far from dull. 

Phenomenal dust storms can grow so large they engulf the entire planet, temperatures can get so cold that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere condenses directly into snow or frost, and marsquakes — a Mars version of an earthquake — regularly shake things up. Therefore, it is no surprise that this little red rock continues to intrigue scientists and is one of the most explored bodies in the solar system, according to NASA Science . 

Related: How long does it take to get to Mars?

Befitting the Red Planet's bloody color, the Romans named it after their god of war. In truth, the Romans copied the ancient Greeks, who also named the planet after their god of war, Ares. 

Other civilizations also typically gave the planet names based on its color — for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one," while ancient Chinese astronomers dubbed it "the fire star."

The bright rust color Mars is known for is due to  iron-rich minerals  in its regolith — the loose dust and rock covering its surface. Earth 's soil is a kind of regolith, too, albeit one loaded with organic content. According to NASA, the iron minerals oxidize, or rust, causing the soil to look red.

We asked David C. Agle media relations at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California which handles missions on the Martian surface such as the Perseverance Rover some questions about the Red Planet.  

David Agle is a writer, producer and media relations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena.

What type of planet is Mars?

Mars is a terrestrial, or rocky, planet.  

Why is Mars known as the "Red Planet"?

Mars is known as the "Red Planet" because it appears faintly reddish/orange when viewed in the night sky. This reddish color comes from the abundance of iron minerals and dust on the Martian surface. 

How is Mars different from Earth?

Mars is further from the sun and smaller than Earth, and at least as far as we know, does not appear to be habitable by life.  

What do we know about Mars' past and was it ever like our planet?

We've learned a lot about Mars from the past 30 years of lander, rover, and orbiter missions. We have confirmed the existence of past water on the Martian surface, that Mars was once a habitable planet, and that it once had a thicker atmosphere than it does today.  

What have we learned about Mars over the past decade thanks to missions like Curiosity, InSight, and Perseverance?

Curiosity and Perseverance are studying ancient habitable environments exposed on the surface of Mars, and both missions have found evidence that the basic ingredients that life needs to exist were present at the surface or near-subsurface on Mars billions of years ago. InSight offered us an unprecedented view into the interior of Mars. 

What is the biggest unanswered question about Mars?

Although we know now that Mars was a habitable planet in the past, the biggest unanswered question about Mars is whether it actually hosted life. 

The planet's  cold, thin atmosphere  means liquid water likely cannot exist on the Martian surface for any appreciable length of time. Features called recurring slope lineae may have spurts of briny water flowing on the surface, but this evidence is disputed; some scientists argue the hydrogen spotted from orbit in this region may instead indicate briny salts. This means that although this desert planet is just half the diameter of Earth, it has the same amount of dry land.

The Red Planet is home to both the highest mountain and the deepest, longest valley in the solar system.  Olympus Mons  is roughly 17 miles (27 kilometers) high, about three times as tall as Mount Everest, while the  Valles Marineris system of valleys — named after the Mariner 9 probe that discovered it in 1971 — reaches as deep as 6 miles (10 km) and runs east-west for roughly 2,500 miles (4,000 km), about one-fifth of the distance around Mars and close to the width of Australia.

Scientists think the Valles Marineris formed mostly by rifting of the crust as it got stretched. Individual canyons within the system are as much as 60 miles (100 km) wide. The canyons merge in the central part of the Valles Marineris in a region as much as 370 miles (600 km) wide. Large channels emerging from the ends of some canyons and layered sediments within suggest that the canyons might once have been filled with liquid water.

Mars also has the largest volcanoes in the solar system, Olympus Mons being one of them. The massive volcano, which is about 370 miles (600 km) in diameter, is wide enough to cover the state of New Mexico. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, with slopes that rise gradually like those of Hawaiian volcanoes, and was created by eruptions of lava that flowed for long distances before solidifying. Mars also has many other kinds of volcanic landforms, from small, steep-sided cones to enormous plains coated in hardened lava. Some minor eruptions might still occur on the planet today.

Related: Space volcanoes: Origins, variants and eruptions

Channels, valleys and gullies are found all over Mars, and suggest that liquid water might have flowed across the planet's surface in recent times. Some channels can be 60 miles (100 km) wide and 1,200 miles (2,000 km) long.  Water may still lie in cracks and pores in underground rock . A study by scientists in 2018 suggested that salty water below the Martian surface could hold a considerable amount of oxygen, which could support microbial life. However, the amount of oxygen depends on temperature and pressure; temperature changes on Mars from time to time as the tilt of its rotation axis shifts.

Many regions of Mars are flat, low-lying plains. The lowest of the northern plains are among the flattest, smoothest places in the solar system, potentially created by water that once flowed across the Martian surface. The northern hemisphere mostly lies at a lower elevation than the southern hemisphere, suggesting the crust may be thinner in the north than in the south. This difference between the north and south might be due to a very large impact shortly after the birth of Mars. 

The number of craters on Mars varies dramatically from place to place, depending on how old the surface is. Much of the surface of the southern hemisphere is extremely old, and so has many craters — including the planet's largest, 1,400-mile-wide (2,300 km) Hellas Planitia — while that of northern hemisphere is younger and so has fewer craters. Some volcanoes also have just a few craters, which suggests they erupted recently, with the resulting lava covering up any old craters. Some craters have unusual-looking deposits of debris around them resembling solidified mudflows, potentially indicating that the impactor hit underground water or ice.

In 2018, the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft detected what could be a slurry of water and grains underneath icy Planum Australe . (Some reports describe it as a "lake," but it's unclear how much regolith is inside the water.) This body of water is said to be about 12.4 miles (20 km) across. Its underground location is reminiscent of similar underground lakes in Antarctica, which have been found to host microbes. Late in the year, Mars Express also spied a huge, icy zone in the Red Planet's Korolev Crater .

The two  moons of Mars , Phobos and Deimos, were discovered by American astronomer Asaph Hall over the course of a week in 1877. Hall had almost given up his search for a moon of Mars, but his wife, Angelina, urged him on. He discovered Deimos the next night, and Phobos six days after that. He named the moons after the sons of the Greek war god Ares — Phobos means "fear," while Deimos means "rout."

Both Phobos and Deimos are apparently made of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice and are covered in dust and loose rocks. They are tiny next to Earth's moon, and are irregularly shaped, since they lack enough gravity to pull themselves into a more circular form. The widest  Phobos  gets is about 17 miles (27 km), and the widest Deimos gets is roughly 9 miles (15 km). ( Earth's moon is 2,159 miles, or 3,475 km, wide.)

Both Mars moons are pockmarked with craters from meteor impacts. The surface of Phobos also possesses an intricate pattern of grooves, which may be cracks that formed after the impact created the moon's largest crater — a hole about 6 miles (10 km) wide, or nearly half the width of Phobos. The two Martian satellites always show the same face to their parent planet, just as our moon does to Earth.

It remains uncertain how Phobos and  Deimos  were born. They may be former asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravitational pull, or they may have formed in orbit around Mars at roughly the same time the planet came into existence.  Ultraviolet light  reflected from Phobos provides strong evidence that the moon is a captured asteroid, according to astronomers at the University of Padova in Italy.

Phobos is gradually spiraling toward Mars, drawing about 6 feet (1.8 meters) closer to the Red Planet each century. Within 50 million years, Phobos will either smash into Mars or break up and form a ring of debris around the planet.

Mars quick facts: Size, composition and structure

Mars is 4,220 miles (6,791 km) in diameter — far smaller than Earth, which is 7,926 miles (12,756 km) wide. The Red Planet is about 10% as massive as our home world, with a gravitational pull 38% as strong. (A 100-pound person here on Earth would weigh just 38 pounds on Mars, but their mass would be the same on both planets.)  

Atmospheric composition (by volume) 

According to NASA , the atmosphere of Mars is 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, 0.13% oxygen and 0.08% carbon monoxide, with minor amounts of water, nitrogen oxide, neon, hydrogen-deuterium-oxygen, krypton and xenon.

Magnetic field

Mars lost its global magnetic field about 4 billion years ago, leading to the stripping of much of its atmosphere by the solar wind. But there are regions of the planet's crust today that can be at least 10 times more strongly magnetized than anything measured on Earth, which suggests those regions are remnants of an ancient global magnetic field.

Internal structure

NASA's InSight lander has been probing the Martian interior since touching down near the planet's equator in November 2018. InSight measures and characterizes marsquakes, and mission team members are tracking wobbles in Mars' tilt over time by precisely tracking the lander's position on the planet's surface.

These data have revealed key insights about Mars' internal structure. For example, InSight team members recently estimated that the planet's core is 1,110 to 1,300 miles (1,780 to 2,080 km) wide . InSight's observations also suggest that Mars' crust is 14 to 45 miles (24 and 72 km) thick , on average, with the mantle making up the rest of the planet's (non-atmospheric) volume.

For comparison, Earth's core is about 4,400 miles (7,100 km) wide — bigger than Mars itself — and its mantle is roughly 1,800 miles (2,900 km) thick. Earth has two kinds of crust, continental and oceanic, whose average thicknesses are about 25 miles (40 km) and 5 miles (8 km), respectively.

Chemical composition

Mars likely has a solid core composed of iron, nickel and sulfur. The mantle of Mars is probably similar to Earth's in that it is composed mostly of peridotite, which is made up primarily of silicon, oxygen, iron and magnesium. The crust is probably largely made of the volcanic rock basalt, which is also common in the crusts of the Earth and the moon, although some crustal rocks, especially in the northern hemisphere, may be a form of andesite, a volcanic rock that contains more silica than basalt does.

Vast deposits of what appear to be finely layered stacks of water ice and dust extend from the poles to latitudes of about 80 degrees in both Martian hemispheres. These were probably deposited by the atmosphere over long spans of time. On top of much of these layered deposits in both hemispheres are caps of water ice that remain frozen year-round. 

Additional seasonal caps of frost appear in the wintertime. These are made of solid carbon dioxide, also known as "dry ice," which has condensed from carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. (Mars' think air is about 95% carbon dioxide by volume.) In the deepest part of the winter, this frost can extend from the poles to latitudes as low as 45 degrees, or halfway to the equator. The  dry ice layer  appears to have a fluffy texture, like freshly fallen snow, according to a report in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

Mars is much colder than Earth, in large part due to its greater distance from the sun. The  average temperature  is about minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 degrees Celsius), although it can vary from minus 195 F (minus 125 C) near the poles during the winter to as much as 70 F (20 C) at midday near the equator.

The carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars is also about 100 times less dense than Earth's on average, but it is nevertheless thick enough to support weather, clouds and winds. The density of the atmosphere varies seasonally, as winter forces carbon dioxide to freeze out of the Martian air. In the ancient past, the atmosphere was likely significantly thicker and able to support water flowing on the planet's surface. Over time, lighter molecules in the Martian atmosphere escaped under pressure from the solar wind, which affected the atmosphere because Mars does not have a global magnetic field. This process is being studied today by NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission .

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found the first definitive detections of  carbon-dioxide snow clouds , making Mars the only body in the solar system known to host such unusual winter weather. The Red Planet also causes water-ice snow to fall from the clouds.

The dust storms on Mars are the largest in the solar system, capable of blanketing the entire Red Planet and lasting for months. One theory as to why dust storms can grow so big on Mars is because the airborne dust particles absorb sunlight, warming the Martian atmosphere in their vicinity. Warm pockets of air then flow toward colder regions, generating winds. Strong winds lift more dust off the ground, which, in turn, heats the atmosphere, raising more wind and kicking up more dust.

These dust storms can pose serious risks to robots on the Martian surface. For example, NASA's Opportunity Mars rover died after being engulfed in a giant 2018 storm, which blocked sunlight from reaching the robot's solar panels for weeks at a time.

Mars' orbit around the sun

Mars lies farther from the sun than Earth does, so the Red Planet has a longer year — 687 days compared to 365 for our home world. The two planets have similar day lengths, however; it takes about 24 hours and 40 minutes for Mars to complete one rotation around its axis, versus 24 hours for Earth.

The axis of Mars, like Earth's, is tilted in relation to the sun. This means that like Earth, the amount of sunlight falling on certain parts of the Red Planet can vary widely during the year, giving Mars seasons.

— Average distance from the sun : 141,633,260 miles (227,936,640 km). By comparison: 1.524 times that of Earth.

— Perihelion (closest solar approach) : 128,400,000 miles (206,600,000 km). By comparison: 1.404 times that of Earth. 

— Aphelion (farthest distance from the sun) : 154,900,000 miles (249,200,000 km). By comparison: 1.638 times that of Earth. 

However, the seasons that Mars experiences are more extreme than Earth's because the Red Planet's elliptical, oval-shaped orbit around the sun is more elongated than that of any of the other major planets. When Mars is closest to the sun, its southern hemisphere is tilted toward our star, giving the planet a short, warm summer, while the northern hemisphere experiences a short, cold winter. When Mars is farthest from the sun, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, giving it a long, mild summer, while the southern hemisphere experiences a long, cold winter.

The tilt of the Red Planet's axis swings wildly over time because it's not stabilized by a large moon. This situation has led to different climates on the Martian surface throughout its history. A 2017 study suggests that the changing tilt also influenced the  release of methane  into Mars' atmosphere, causing temporary warming periods that allowed water to flow. 

The first person to observe Mars with a telescope was  Galileo Galilei , in 1610. In the century following, astronomers discovered the planet's polar ice caps. In the 19th and 20th centuries, some researchers — most famously, Percival Lowell — believed they saw a network of long, straight canals on Mars that hinted at a possible civilization. However, these sightings proved to be mistaken interpretations of geological features.

A number of Martian rocks have fallen to Earth over the eons, providing scientists a rare opportunity to study pieces of Mars without having to leave our planet. One of the most controversial finds was Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) — a Martian meteorite that, according to a 1996 study, likely contains tiny fossils and other evidence of Mars life . Other researchers cast doubt on this hypothesis, but the team behind the famous 1996 study have held firm to their interpretation, and the debate about ALH84001 continues today .

In 2018, a separate meteorite study found that organic molecules — the carbon-containing building blocks of life, although not necessarily evidence of life itself — could have formed on Mars through battery-like chemical reactions.

Robotic spacecraft began observing Mars in the 1960s, with the United States launching  Mariner 4 in 1964 and Mariners 6 and 7 in 1969. Those early missions revealed Mars to be a barren world, without any signs of the life or civilizations people such as Lowell had imagined there. In 1971,  Mariner 9  orbited Mars, mapping about 80% of the planet and discovering its volcanoes and big canyons.

The Soviet Union also launched numerous Red Planet spacecraft in the 1960s and early 1970s, but most of those missions failed. Mars 2 (1971) and Mars 3 (1971) operated successfully but were unable to map the surface due to dust storms. NASA's  Viking 1  lander touched down on the surface of Mars in 1976, pulling off the first successful landing on the Red Planet. Its twin, Viking 2, landed six weeks later in a different Mars region.

The Viking landers took the first close-up pictures of the Martian surface but found no strong evidence for life. Again, however, there has been debate: Gil Levin,  principal investigator of the Vikings' Labeled Release life-detection experiment, forever maintained that the landers spied evidence of microbial metabolism in the Martian dirt. (Levin died in July 2021, at the age of 97.)

The next two craft to successfully reach the Red Planet were Mars Pathfinder, a lander, and  Mars Global Surveyor , an orbiter, both NASA craft that launched in 1996. A small robot onboard Pathfinder named  Sojourner  — the first wheeled rover ever to explore the surface of another planet — ventured over the planet's surface, analyzing rocks for 95 Earth days.

In 2001, NASA launched the  Mars Odyssey  orbiter, which discovered vast amounts of water ice beneath the Martian surface, mostly in the upper 3 feet (1 meter). It remains uncertain whether more water lies underneath, since the probe cannot see water any deeper.

In 2003, Mars passed closer to Earth than it had anytime in the past 60,000 years. That same year, NASA launched two golf-cart-sized rovers, nicknamed Spirit and Opportunity , which explored different regions of the Martian surface after touching down in January 2004. Both rovers found many signs that water once flowed on the planet's surface. 

Spirit and Opportunity were originally tasked with three-month surface missions, but both kept roving for far longer than that. NASA didn't declare Spirit dead until 2011, and Opportunity was still going strong until that dust storm hit in mid-2018.

In 2008, NASA sent a lander called Phoenix to the far northern plains of Mars. The robot confirmed the presence of water ice in the near subsurface, among other finds. 

In 2011, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission sent the  Curiosity rover to investigate Mars' past potential to host life. Not. long after landing inside the Red Planet's Gale Crater in August 2012, the car-sized robot determined that the area hosted a long-lived, potentially habitable lake-and-stream system in the ancient past. Curiosity has also found complex organic molecules and documented seasonal fluctuations in methane concentrations in the atmosphere.

NASA has two other orbiters working around the planet — the  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter  and  MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) , which arrived at Mars in 2006 and 2014, respectively. The European Space Agency (ESA) also has two spacecraft orbiting the planet:  Mars Express  and the Trace Gas Orbiter.

In September 2014, India's  Mars Orbiter Mission  also reached the Red Planet, making it the fourth nation to successfully enter orbit around Mars.

In November 2018, NASA landed a stationary craft called Mars InSight on the surface. As noted above, InSight is investigating Mars' internal structure and composition, primarily by measuring and characterizing marsquakes.

NASA launched the life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover in July 2020. Perseverance, which is about the same size as Curiosity, landed on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021 along with a tiny, technology-demonstrating helicopter known as Ingenuity.

As of September 2021, Ingenuity had made more than a dozen flights on Mars, showing that aerial exploration of the planet is feasible. Perseverance documented the 4-pound (1.8 kg) chopper's early flights, then began focusing in earnest on its own science mission. The big rover has already collected several samples, part of a big cache that will be brought back to Earth, perhaps as soon as 2031 , by a joint NASA-ESA campaign.

July 2020 also saw the launch of the United Arab Emirates' first Mars mission, called Hope , and China's first fully homegrown Mars effort, Tianwen 1. The Hope orbiter arrived at Mars in February 2021 and is studying the planet's atmosphere, weather and climate.  

— A brief history of Mars missions — NASA's Perseverance Mars rover mission in photos — The search for life on Mars: A photo timeline

Tianwen 1 , which consists of an orbiter and a lander-rover duo, also reached Mars orbit in February 2021. The landed element touched down a few months later, in May. The Tianwen 1 rover, called Zhurong, soon rolled down the landing platform's ramp and began exploring the Martian surface.

ESA is also working on a Mars rover named Rosalind Franklin, previously known as the ExoMars rover. The rover is a multi-part European-led program to explore Mars, both on the surface and from above. The program has been delayed several times and is unlikely to launch before 2028 .

Robots aren't the only ones getting a ticket to Mars. A workshop group of scientists from government agencies, academia and industry have determined that a  NASA-led manned mission to Mars  should be possible by the 2030s. 

In late 2017, the administration of President Donald Trump directed NASA to send people back to the moon before going to Mars. NASA is working on this goal via a program called Artemis , which aims to establish a sustainable, long-term human presence on and around the moon by the late 2020s. The lessons and skills learned from this lunar effort will help pave the way for putting boots on Mars, NASA officials have said.

Robotic missions to the Red Planet have seen much success in the past few decades, but it remains a considerable challenge to get people to Mars. With current rocket technology, it would take at least six months for people to travel to Mars. Red Planet explorers would therefore be exposed for long stretches to deep-space radiation and to microgravity, which has devastating effects on the human body . Performing activities in the moderate gravity on Mars could prove extremely difficult after many months in microgravity. Research into the effects of microgravity continues on the International Space Station.

NASA isn't the only entity with crewed Mars aspirations. Other nations, including China and Russia, have also announced their goals for sending humans to the Red Planet.

And Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has long stressed that he established the company back in 2002 primarily to help humanity settle the Red Planet. SpaceX is currently developing and testing a fully reusable deep-space transportation system called Starship , which Musk believes is the breakthrough needed to get people to Mars at long last.

Explore Mars in more detail with NASA's Mars Exploration Program . Read about Mars' climate in more detail with the National Weather Service . Send your name to Mars on NASA's next flight to the Red Planet.  

Bibliography

NASA. Mars fact sheet. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html

NASA. Mars. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/

NASA. NASA Mars Exploration. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://mars.nasa.gov/

NASA. Send your name to Mars. NASA. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/future

US Department of Commerce, N. O. A. A. The planet Mars. National Weather Service. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from www.weather.gov/fsd/mars

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Charles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Space.com and Live Science. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica. Visit him at http://www.sciwriter.us

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All About Mars

Mars’ atmosphere has clouds and wind just like Earth. Sometimes the wind blows the red dust into a dust storm. Spiraling dust storms–called dust devils–can look like tornadoes. Mars’ large storms sometimes cover the entire planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars is a cold desert world. The average temperature on Mars is minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit – way below freezing. It is half the size of Earth. Mars is sometimes called the Red Planet. It's red because of rusty iron in the ground.

Like Earth, Mars has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather. It has a very thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon. People would not be able to breathe the air on Mars.

Explore Mars! Click and drag to rotate the planet. Scroll or pinch to zoom in and out. Credit: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD)

There are signs of ancient floods on Mars, but now water mostly exists in icy dirt and thin clouds. On some Martian hillsides, there is evidence of liquid salty water in the ground.

Scientists want to know if Mars may have had living things in the past. They also want to know if Mars could support life now or in the future.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Structure and Surface

• Mars is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky.
• Mars has a thin atmosphere.
• Mars has an active atmosphere, but the surface of the planet is not active. Its volcanoes are dead.

Time on Mars

• One day on Mars lasts 24.6 hours. It is just a little longer than a day on Earth.
• One year on Mars is 687 Earth days. It is almost twice as long as one year on Earth.

Mars’ Neighbors

• Mars has two moons. Their names are Phobos and Deimos.
• Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. That means Earth and Jupiter are Mars’ neighboring planets.

Quick History

• Mars has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.
• There was even a flying helicopter on Mars. Seriously! The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity , successfully tested powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time. It hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover and worked with the rover to explore Mars. Ingenuity was designed as a tech demo expected to fly no more than five times over 30 days. It ended its mission in early 2024 having completed 72 flights in just under three years. Thanks Ingenuity!
• Several missions have orbited, landed on, or roved around on Mars: InSight , MAVEN , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , and many more ! Mars is the only planet we have sent rovers to. They drive around Mars, taking pictures and measurements. Learn more about them and what they have discovered by clicking the pictures below!

Mars Rovers

Perseverance

Spirit and Opportunity

What does Mars look like?

This infographic uses composite orbiter images and an outline of the United States to show the scale of the Valles Marineris (a canyon system more than 2,000 miles long!). Swipe left and right to see how big this canyon system is compared to the United States. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This animated GIF was created using footage taken by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 25th flight on April 8, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This animated image blinks two versions of a May 11, 2016, selfie of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover at a drilled sample site called "Okoruso." In one version, cameras atop the rover's mast face the arm-mounted camera taking the portrait. In the other, they face away. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas at two times of day on April 8, 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Explore Mars!

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock

The six-wheeled geologist found a fascinating rock that has some indications it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago, but further research is needed.

Why Do We Go?

Mars is one of the most explored bodies in our solar system, and it's the only planet where we've sent rovers to explore the alien landscape. NASA missions have found lots of evidence that Mars was much wetter and warmer, with a thicker atmosphere, billions of years ago.

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The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission is the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.

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Beyond the Moon

Humans to mars.

Like the Moon, Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and a driver of technologies that will enable humans to travel and explore far from Earth.

Mars remains our horizon goal for human exploration because it is one of the only other places we know in the solar system where life may have existed. What we learn about the Red Planet will tell us more about our Earth’s past and future, and may help answer whether life exists beyond our home planet.

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Why we explore Mars—and what decades of missions have revealed

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.

Since the 1960s, humans have set out to discover what Mars can teach us about how planets grow and evolve, and whether it has ever hosted alien life. So far, only uncrewed spacecraft have made the trip to the red planet, but that could soon change. NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s—and several new missions are launching before then to push exploration forward. Here’s a look at why these journeys are so important—and what humans have learned about Mars through decades of exploration.

Why explore Mars

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 .

Today, when scientists scrutinize the Martian surface, they see features that are unquestionably the work of ancient, flowing liquids : branching streams, river valleys, basins, and deltas. Those observations suggest that the planet may have once had a vast ocean covering its northern hemisphere. Elsewhere, rainstorms soaked the landscape, lakes pooled, and rivers gushed, carving troughs into the terrain. It was also likely wrapped in a thick atmosphere capable of maintaining liquid water at Martian temperatures and pressures.

Somewhere during Martian evolution, the planet went through a dramatic transformation, and a world that was once rather Earthlike became the dusty, dry husk we see today. The question now is, what happened? Where did those liquids go, and what happened to the Martian atmosphere ?

Exploring Mars helps scientists learn about momentous shifts in climate that can fundamentally alter planets. It also lets us look for biosignatures, signs that might reveal whether life was abundant in the planet’s past—and if it still exists on Mars today. And, the more we learn about Mars, the better equipped we’ll be to try to make a living there, someday in the future.

Past missions, major discoveries

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.

Over the subsequent decades, orbiters returned far more detailed data on the planet's atmosphere and surface, and finally dispelled the notion, widely held by scientists since the late 1800s, that Martian canals were built by an alien civilization. They also revealed some truly dramatic features: the small world boasts the largest volcanoes in the solar system, and one of the largest canyons yet discovered—a chasm as long as the continental United States. Dust storms regularly sweep over its plains, and winds whip up localized dust devils.

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In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecraft to successfully operate on the planet’s surface, returning photos until 1982. They also conducted biological experiments on Martian soil that were designed to uncover signs of life in space—but their results were inconclusive , and scientists still disagree over how to interpret the data.

NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission , launched in 1996, put the first free-moving rover—called Sojourner—on the planet. Its successors include the rovers Spirit and Opportunity , which explored the planet for far longer than expected and returned more than 100,000 images before dust storms obliterated their solar panels in the 2010s.

Now, two NASA spacecraft are active on the Martian surface: InSight is probing the planet’s interior and it has already revealed that “ marsquakes” routinely rattle its surface . The Curiosity rover , launched in 2012, is also still wheeling around in Gale Crater, taking otherworldly selfies, and studying the rocks and sediments deposited in the crater’s ancient lakebed.

Several spacecraft are transmitting data from orbit: NASA’s MAVEN orbiter , Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter , and Mars Odyssey ; ESA’s Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter ; and India’s Mars Orbiter Mission .

Together, these missions have shown scientists that Mars is an active planet that is rich in the ingredients needed for life as we know it—water, organic carbon , and an energy source. Now, the question is: Did life ever evolve on Mars , and is it still around?

Future of Mars exploration

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.

Soon, in one way or another, humanity may finally know whether our neighboring planet ever hosted life—and whether there’s a future for our species on another world.

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Five reasons to explore Mars

Subscribe to the center for technology innovation newsletter, darrell m. west darrell m. west senior fellow - center for technology innovation , douglas dillon chair in governmental studies.

August 18, 2020

The recent launch of the Mars rover Perseverance is the latest U.S. space mission seeking to understand our solar system. Its expected arrival at the Red Planet in mid-February 2021 has a number of objectives linked to science and innovation. The rover is equipped with sophisticated instruments designed to search for the remains of ancient microbial life, take pictures and videos of rocks, drill for soil and rock samples, and use a small helicopter to fly around the Jezero Crater landing spot .

Mars is a valuable place for exploration because it can be reached in 6 ½ months, is a major opportunity for scientific exploration, and has been mapped and studied for several decades. The mission represents the first step in a long-term effort to bring Martian samples back to Earth, where they can be analyzed for residues of microbial life. Beyond the study of life itself, there are a number of different benefits of Mars exploration.

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. It is an ideal place to search for the residues of microbial life, test new technologies, and lay the groundwork for human exploration down the road.

The mission plans to investigate whether microbial life existed on Mars billions of years ago and therefore that life is not unique to Planet Earth. As noted by Chris McKay, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Science Center, that would be an extraordinary discovery. “Right here in our solar system, if life started twice , that tells us some amazing things about our universe,” he pointed out. “It means the universe is full of life. Life becomes a natural feature of the universe, not just a quirk of this odd little planet around this star.”

The question of the origins of life and its ubiquity around the universe is central to science, religion, and philosophy. For much of our existence, humans have assumed that even primitive life was unique to Planet Earth and not present in the rest of the solar system, let alone the universe. We have constructed elaborate religious and philosophical narratives around this assumption and built our identity along the notion that life is unique to Earth.

If, as many scientists expect, future space missions cast doubt on that assumption or outright disprove it by finding remnants of microbial life on other planets, it will be both invigorating and illusion-shattering. It will force humans to confront their own myths and consider alternative narratives about the universe and the place of Earth in the overall scheme of things.

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As noted in my Brookings book, Megachange , given the centrality of these issues for fundamental questions about human existence and the meaning of life, it would represent a far-reaching shift in existing human paradigms. As argued by scientist McKay, discovering evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars would lead experts to conclude that life likely is ubiquitous around the universe and not limited to Planet Earth. Humans would have to construct new theories about ourselves and our place in the universe.

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. Space exploration required the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to learn how to communicate across wide distances, develop precise navigational tools, store, transmit, and process large amounts of data, deal with health issues through digital imaging and telemedicine, and develop collaborative tools that link scientists around the world. The space program has pioneered the miniaturization of scientific equipment and helped engineers figure out how to land and maneuver a rover from millions of miles away.

Going to Mars requires similar inventiveness. Scientists have had to figure out how to search for life in ancient rocks, drill for rock samples, take high resolution videos, develop flying machines in a place with gravity that is 40 percent lower than on Earth, send detailed information back to Earth in a timely manner, and take off from another planet. In the future, we should expect large payoffs in commercial developments from Mars exploration and advances that bring new conveniences and inventions to people.

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. For a substantial fee, they can experience weightlessness, take in the views of the entire planet, see the stars from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and witness the wonders of other celestial bodies.

The Mars program will help with space tourism by improving engineering expertise with space docking, launches, and reentry and providing additional experience about the impact of space travel on the human body. Figuring out how weightlessness and low gravity situations alter human performance and how space radiation affects people represent just a couple areas where there are likely to be positive by-products for future travel.

The advent of space tourism will broaden human horizons in the same way international travel has exposed people to other lands and perspectives. It will show them that the Earth has a delicate ecosystem that deserves protecting and why it is important for people of differing countries to work together to solve global problems. Astronauts who have had this experience say it has altered their viewpoints and had a profound impact on their way of thinking.

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. Figuring out how to harvest those materials in a safe and responsible manner and bring them back to Earth represents a possible benefit of space exploration. Elements that are rare on Earth may exist elsewhere, and that could open new avenues for manufacturing, product design, and resource distribution. This mission could help resource utilization through advances gained with its Mars Oxygen Experiment (MOXIE) equipment that converts Martian carbon dioxide into oxygen. If MOXIE works as intended, it would help humans live and work on the Red Planet.

Advance Science

One of the most crucial features of humanity is our curiosity about the life, the universe, and how things operate. Exploring space provides a means to satisfy our thirst for knowledge and improve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.

Space travel already has exploded centuries-old myths and promises to continue to confront our long-held assumptions about who we are and where we come from. The next decade promises to be an exciting period as scientists mine new data from space telescopes, space travel, and robotic exploration. Ten or twenty years from now, we may have answers to basic questions that have eluded humans for centuries, such as how ubiquitous life is outside of Earth, whether it is possible for humans to survive on other planets, and how planets evolve over time.

The author would like to thank Victoria E. Hamilton, staff scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, for her helpful feedback on this blog post.

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Why go to Mars?

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.

Searching for life on Mars Understanding whether life existed elsewhere in the Universe beyond Earth is a fundamental question of humankind. Mars is an excellent place to investigate this question because it is the most similar planet to Earth in the Solar System. Evidence suggests that Mars was once full of water, warmer and had a thicker atmosphere, offering a potentially habitable environment.

Understanding the surface of Mars and its evolution

While life arose and evolved on Earth, Mars experienced serious climate change. Planetary geologists can study rocks, sediments and soils for clues to uncover the history of the surface. Scientists are interested in the history of water on Mars to understand how life could have survived. Volcanoes, craters from meteoroid impacts, signs of atmospheric or photochemical effects and geophysical processes all carry aspects of Mars’ history.

Samples of the atmosphere could reveal crucial details on its formation and evolution, and also why Mars has less atmosphere than Earth.

Mars can also help us to learn more about our home. Understanding martian geophysical processes promises to uncover details of the evolution and history of Earth and other planets in our Solar System.

Human exploration

To reduce the cost and risk for human exploration of Mars, robotic missions can scout ahead and help us to find potential resources and the risks of working on the planet.

Before sending astronauts, we need to understand the hazards. Inevitably, astronauts would bring uncontained martian material when they return to Earth, either on their equipment or on themselves. Understanding any biohazards in the soil and dust will help the planning and preparation of these future missions.

Going to Mars is hard and it is even harder for humans because we would need to pack everything to survive the trip to our neighbouring planet and back. Designing a Mars mission would be easier if we could use resources that are already available locally. Water is a valuable resource for human expeditions, both to consume by astronauts and for fuel. Samples gathered by robots could help to evaluate where potential resources are available for future human explorers and how to exploit them.

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