Andy Weir’s bestselling story “The Martian” predicts that by 2035 NASA could have landed people on Mars thrice, perfected return-to-Earth flight programs and collaborated with the China Nationwide House Administration. We at the moment are 10 years previous the Hollywood adaptation’s 2015 launch and 10 years shy of its fictional timeline. At this midpoint, Mars exploration seems a bit totally different than the way it was portrayed in “The Martian,” with each extra discoveries and extra controversy.
As a planetary geologist who works with NASA missions to review Mars, I observe exploration science and coverage carefully. In 2010, the U.S. Nationwide House Coverage set targets for human missions to Mars within the 2030s. However in 2017, the White Home House Coverage Directive 1 shifted NASA’s focus towards returning first to the Moon underneath what would turn out to be the Artemis program.
Though ideas for crewed missions to Mars have gained reputation, NASA’s precise plans for touchdown people on Mars stay fragile. Notably, over the past 10 years, it has been robotic, slightly than crewed, missions which have propelled discovery and the human creativeness ahead.
NASA’s 2023 Moon to Mars Technique and Aims Improvement doc lays out the steps the company was taking pictures for on the time, to go first to the Moon, and from there to Mars.
NASA
Robotic discoveries
Since 2015, satellites and rovers have reshaped scientists’ understanding of Mars. They’ve revealed numerous insights into how its local weather has modified over time.
As Earth’s neighbor, local weather shifts on Mars additionally mirror photo voltaic system processes affecting Earth at a time when life was first taking maintain. Thus, Mars has turn out to be a focus for investigating the age previous questions of “where do we come from?” and “are we alone?”
The Alternative, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have pushed dozens of miles finding out layered rock formations that function a report of Mars’ previous. By finding out sedimentary layers – rock formations stacked like layers of a cake – planetary geologists have pieced collectively a vivid story of environmental change that dwarfs what Earth is at the moment experiencing.
Mars was as soon as a world of erupting volcanoes, glaciers, lakes and flowing rivers – an atmosphere not in contrast to early Earth. Then its core cooled, its magnetic area faltered and its environment drifted away. The planet’s uncovered floor has retained indicators of these processes ever since within the type of panorama patterns, sequences of layered sediment and mineral mixtures.
Layered sedimentary rocks uncovered inside the craters of Arabia Terra, Mars, recording historical floor processes. Picture from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Excessive Decision Imaging Science Experiment.
NASA/JPL/College of Arizona
Arabia Terra
One focus of scientific investigation over the past 10 years is especially related to the setting of “The Martian” however fails to obtain point out within the story. To achieve his greatest likelihood of survival, protagonist Mark Watney, performed by Matt Damon, should cross an enormous, dusty and crater-pocked area of Mars often known as Arabia Terra.
In 2022 and 2023, I, together with colleagues at Northern Arizona College and Johns Hopkins College, printed detailed analyses of the layered supplies there utilizing imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey satellites.
Through the use of infrared imagery and measuring the size of floor options, we linked a number of layered deposits to the identical episodes of formation and realized extra concerning the widespread crumbling nature of the terrain seen there at present. As a result of water tends to cement rock tightly collectively, that free materials signifies that round 3.5 billion years in the past, that space had a drying local weather.
To make the discussions about this space simpler, we even labored with the Worldwide Astronomical Union to call a number of beforehand unnamed craters that have been talked about within the story. For instance, one which Watney would have pushed proper by is now named Kozova Crater, after a city in Ukraine.
Extra to discover
Regardless of fast advances in Mars science, many unknowns stay. Scientists nonetheless aren’t certain of the exact ages, atmospheric situations and attainable signatures of life related to every of the totally different rock sorts noticed on the floor.
As an illustration, the Perseverance rover lately drilled into and analyzed a novel set of rocks internet hosting natural – that’s, carbon-based – compounds. Natural compounds function the constructing blocks of life, however extra detailed evaluation is required to find out whether or not these particular rocks as soon as hosted microbial life.
The in-development Mars Pattern Return mission goals to handle these primary excellent questions by delivering the first-ever unaltered fragments of one other world to Earth. The Perseverance rover is already caching rock and soil samples, together with ones internet hosting natural compounds, in sealed tubes. A future lander will then want to choose up and launch the caches again to Earth.
Sampling Mars rocks may inform scientists extra concerning the crimson planet’s previous, and whether or not it may have hosted life.
As soon as house, researchers can look at these supplies with devices orders of magnitude extra delicate than something that might be flown on a spacecraft. Scientists stand to study much more concerning the habitability, geologic historical past and presence of any indicators of life on Mars by way of the pattern return marketing campaign than by sending people to the floor.
This attitude is why NASA, the European House Company and others have invested some US$30 billion in robotic Mars exploration for the reason that Nineteen Sixties. The payoff has been staggering: That work has triggered fast technological advances in robotics, telecommunications and supplies science. For instance, Mars mission know-how has led to higher sutures for coronary heart surgical procedure and vehicles that may drive themselves.
It has additionally bolstered the standing of NASA and the U.S. as bastions of recent exploration and know-how; and it has impressed thousands and thousands of scholars to take an curiosity in scientific fields.
A selfie from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover with the Ingenuity helicopter, taken with the rover’s extendable arm on April 6, 2021.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Calling the crimson planet house?
Colonizing Mars has a seductive enchantment. It’s arduous to not cheer for the indomitable human spirit whereas watching Watney battle mud storms, oxygen shortages and meals shortage over 140 million miles from rescue.
A lot of the momentum towards colonizing Mars is now tied to SpaceX and its CEO Elon Musk, whose acknowledged mission to make humanity a “multi-planetary species” has turn out to be a kind of rallying cry. However whereas Mars colonization is romantic on paper, this can be very troublesome to really perform, and plenty of critics have questioned the viability of a Mars habitation as a refuge removed from Earth.
Now, with NASA probably going through a virtually 50% discount to its science funds, the U.S. dangers dissolving its planetary science and robotic operations portfolio altogether, together with pattern return.
Nonetheless, President Donald Trump and Musk have pushed for human house exploration to one way or the other proceed to progress, regardless of these proposed cuts – successfully sidelining the robotic, science-driven applications which have underpinned all of Mars exploration to this point.
But, it’s these applications which have yielded humanity’s richest insights into the crimson planet and given each scientists and storytellers like Andy Weir the inspiration to think about what it have to be like to face on Mars’ floor in any respect.
