Fifty-six years have passed since the first successful flyby of our red planetary neighbour. As we continue to plan and send more spacecraft to Mars, each more advanced than the previous one, what do we hope to achieve?
Proving (or disproving) life on Mars is perhaps the foremost thought in the mind of every scientist. Did life ever exist on the Red Planet? Can it sustain life today? To answer these questions we need to look for things that make place habitable – liquid water and a source of energy-and biosignatures, evidence of past or current life.
We also hope to learn more about the Martian climate. Today we know about the infamous Martian dust storms, and the seasonal deposits of carbon dioxide frost on the ice caps. But we don’t fully understand the processes that drive them. We don’t know for sure whether Mars was once a warmer and wetter planet, and if so, about the factors that brought about this drastic change.
Collecting more data on the planet’s geology – its structure and composition, the history of its evolution, and the processes that act on it – will also help us understand why Mars is how it is today. Upcoming Mars programmes, including rovers, orbiters and the proposed Mars sample return missions, will also prepare us for human exploratory missions in the not-so-distant future!
Picture Credit : Google
