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Space exploration, heading into the vast sea of the unknown, not knowing what terror or calmness awaits us. We have always been interested in space, even before the space race or the first landing of a rover on Mars. At some point in our lives, we've all wondered how space exploration works and what's out there. In today's blog, we'll be seeing all that has happened from the beginning of space exploration to how Mars may be our next planet towards the end.
Let's start with the beginning of exploration, more specifically the moon. I think we've all seen this at least once in our history books: the space race between the Soviets and the United States. Of course, it's now known that the US won the space race by successfully landing the first humans on the moon and on another surface other than Earth only 54 years ago (as of 2023), with one of the most famous quotes said by one of the astronauts.
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" -Neil Armstrong
Very closely after that, more specifically on November 28, 1964, NASA launched the first craft onto Mars. a little earlier than the landing on the moon, but as of 2023, only robotic launchers and rovers have been on Mars, with the most known ones being perseverance, curiosity, opportunity, spirit, and sojourner.
As of today, out of the five, only curiosity and perseverance are still active. Opportunity was lost to a dust storm in 2018 and was declared dead a day afterward when a call went unanswered by Opportunity after 15 years of exploration. Opportunities: The task was to study sites on Mars where life was once favorable, according to wikipedia.com and space.com.
Spirit, having lived 20 times longer than expected in its lifespan, got stuck in quicksand and spent the last of its power trying to free itself. whereas Sojourner After landing, the Pathfinder lander transmitted data for about 3 months and then shut down. This left the semi-autonomous rover Sojourner still functional but unable to communicate with Earth via the lander (according to astronomy.com).
The two survivors: curiosity and perseverance. Curiosity is now studying how Mars' environment transformed into an inhospitable desert. Its ongoing weather and radiation observations are helping prepare for human exploration of Mars. For perseverance, the rover will move uphill and examine rocks on the surface for evidence of past life on Mars.
link below to see raw images that the rover curiosity has taken!
As for humanity, Elon Musk is planning to have the first astronauts land on Mars in 2029! He is planning to have a full-size city on Mars, not only for scientists and researchers but also for regular people. "Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but life is still not multi-planetary, and it is extremely uncertain how much time is left to become so," Musk wrote on Twitter in November 2021. (via inverse.com).
"How will we even make it habitable?" We can use ethylene-emitting cyanobacteria, silica aerogel, fuel-generating microbes, nuclear thermal propulsion, and MOXIE to help us get oxygen on the planet, have some fuel for rocket fuel, making it more sufficient for photosynthesis, etc...
With the right determination and a lot of patience, I do believe that we can make it to Mars and make it habitable as there is nothing that we can't do if we work together!
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