50 years of robotic exploration left over 7000 kg of trash on the Martian surface
If you asked someone five decades back about the red planet, they would be able to tell you nothing about it. But today, standing in 2022, a lot has changed. Nations across the globe have dispatched 18 human-made objects to Mars over 14 separate missions till date. While some of these Mars mission is still in process, over the years of robotic exploration, humanity has left behind a huge amount of debris on the planet’s surface. In fact, if you remember from the news, around mid-August, NASA had reported that its Mars rover Perseverance that is currently stationed on the red planet had not only spotted trash during its landing, but also got trapped in the “tangled mess of netting.” And guess what? It wasn’t even the first time that trash was found on the Martian surface. Why? Because, there’s a lot of it!
This is where we come face to face with the million-dollar question: Where do the debris come from? Well, that would be from three separate sources: discarded hardware, inactive spacecraft and crashed spacecraft.
For instance, every spacecraft that goes to Mars has a module for its protection. This module primarily comprises of a heat shield (to save it from the planet’s atmospheric temperature) and a parachute and landing software (that helps in safe landing). Now, when the spacecraft descends, the module often can’t help but leave behind pieces, that gets spread to different locations around the planet’s surface, that too in smaller pieces, thanks to the power of the Martian winds. In fact, this happened during the 2021 landing of Perseverance rover when debris and netting material crashed onto the ground and went flying everywhere.
Earlier, both NASA-based Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity in 2012 and 2005 respectively, have come upon debris from their landing vehicles. In fact, the trash was later discovered by Perseverance rover in June this year, when it spotted a large, shiny, thermal blanket wedged in some rocks, 1.25 miles from where the previous two rovers had landed.
As for the other kind of debris, they come from nine defunct spacecraft that continues to lie on the Martian surface. These were: Mars 3 lander, Mars 6 lander, Viking 1 lander, Viking 2 lander, Sojourner rover, Beagle 2 lander, Phoenix lander, Spirit rover and the most recently deceased Opportunity rover. Now, whether they should be considered as trash or historical relics continues to remain a dispute.
The fragments of destroyed spacecrafts is yet another source of trash found on Mars. For instance, Curiosity’s broken aluminium wheels that were recently and accidentally collected by the Perseverance rover while it was allocating important research samples.
As per sources, currently, there is exactly 7119 kg of human debris on Mars. Although they are part of history and are proof of early milestones for Mars exploration, scientists are now worried that they continue to threaten ongoing and upcoming missions.