Tag Archives: mars

Humans on Mars?

Putting the first man on the moon was one thing, but putting humans on Mars is the next step and is proving to be a lot more difficult. Although we have had robotic exploration of Mars for over 40 years and had the first rover land on Mars in 1997, we still aren’t close to prepared to send humans to Mars. Human exploration of Mars begins with the low-Earth orbit around the International Space Station to test communication devices needed for deep space exploration and how to protect astronaut’s health in deep space. NASA’s next step which is stated on their website is to send robots to redirect an asteroid to orbit around the moon to explore it in the 2020’s. However, NASA isn’t expected to send people to Mars until at least 2027 which has come with some controversy.

Many people think that the mission should be given more time to avoid possible errors and safety hazards. Although despite controversy there have surprisingly been over 200,000 men and women to sign up around the world. Keep in mind that this is also only a one way ticket because when you sign up to go to Mars there is no coming back. This number has to obviously narrowed down to a select few to actually go to Mars and so there is a training and then selection of who gets to go. During this selection one of the finalists in the Mars One program accused the officials in saying that their process of choosing is flawed because the top candidates helped finance the program. What do you think about this mission, would you ever go to Mars? I would definitely not but obviously there are people here on Earth that are completely comfortable with living on Mars for the rest of their lives.

~Tyler

“Curiosity” hits Mars

The Mars Science Laboratory is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by Nasa in late November. The project successfully landed the Mars rover named Curiosity in Gale Crater on August 6 2012. Some of the reasons that they started the mission was to find how suitable the planet was to live on, it’s climate and geology, and also to find data for a manned mission to Mars. Curiosity has many different scientific instruments which were all designed by an international group. The rover is around two times longer, and five times heavier than the previous space rovers, Spirit, and Opportunity. It also carries ten times the mass of scientific instruments and samples. Nasa anticipates that the rover will explore for at least 687 earth days, and was tested to explore for about 4 years.

“The landing of the Mars science rover Curiosity does not qualify as a significant scientific achievement and should not be getting so much of the public’s attention, says the team of scientists who discovered the Higgs Boson last month. (Borowitz-New Yorker).” Of course the Higgs Boson discovery was very important and new but so is the Mars mission. For me, that statement is wrong because it is proclaiming that one discovery is bigger and more significant than the other. Both are equally of  importance. But I also feel that NASA’s mission to Mars has some defects. Mainly it’s one of being so costly. For example, the total cost of the MSL project is about $2.5 billion from the U.S. and Germany contributed 2.5 million euros which is equivalent $3.1 million. This expenditure is not necessary as is the mission not completely necessary either. The money could be going to local and more current problems in the U.S. However if Curiosity does discover great things, then our world benefits greatly as well. So, keep going NASA’s very own, very advanced rover, Curiosity!

~Samira Anant