Erabaru.net. Mars is one of the neighboring planets of Earth, and this Red Planet has been known to mankind for a long time. In the early 17th century, humans began aiming their astronomical telescopes at Mars. But Mars is too small, and it is difficult for humans to see exactly what is on Mars. Early astronomers speculated that there were many sources of water on Mars, where there could be life and even civilization on Mars.
After entering the space age, humans made a series of close-range explorations of Mars, and even sent probes and rovers to the Martian surface. After spacecraft can explore Mars, why do humans still not dare to bring Martian soil back to Earth for research? What are humans afraid of?
Half a century ago, during the six Apollo manned missions to the Moon, humans brought a total of 382 kilograms of lunar samples back to Earth, including lunar rock and soil.
Although humans have launched a series of spacecraft missions to Mars since the 1960s, Martian soil and rock have not been brought back to Earth. The reason behind all this is not something humans fear on the planet Mars. But because humans don’t have enough technology to bring back samples of Mars.
Compared to the Moon, Mars is much further away from Earth, and much more difficult to detect. Mars is 55 million kilometers from Earth from the closest distance and the farthest distance can reach 400 million kilometers. The journey to Mars is not easy, it can usually take half a year, and the fastest is 128 days (Mariner 7).
The first six Mars probes launched by mankind all failed, and in 1964, NASA’s Mariner 4 successfully flew over Mars for the first time and the mystery of the Red Planet was revealed for the first time. The results show that there is a dead silence on Mars, breaking astronomers’ beautiful illusions about Mars.
Since then, humans have launched dozens of unmanned missions to Mars, the most recent of which was the InSight Mars Landing Probe launched by NASA in 2018. Overall, the Mars rover’s success rate is less than half. Several rockets failed to launch and probes failed to enter orbit; some probes lost contact before reaching Mars, some probes failed to contact after landing on Mars due to a Martian dust storm. This shows that Mars detection is very difficult.
And if the soil and rock on Mars were to be brought back to Earth, the craft would need to carry a lot of fuel, which would increase the cost a lot. Not only that, the Martian soil being brought back also faces a series of technical problems that require more capital investment.
Therefore, humans did not bring Martian soil, not out of fear of ‘something’ on Mars, but because of technical and financial problems. In cases of uncertainty, Mars soil sampling and return missions run the risk of great losses.
According to previous research, even though Mars is currently very dry and desolate, billions of years ago, Mars may have been teeming with life like Earth. However, due to the loss of Mars’ magnetic field and the atmosphere being expelled by the solar wind, Mars has long lost its vitality. (lidya/yn)
Source: homenews11
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