Mars, The Third Planet From The Earth

1.0 Introduction

As time goes by, the earth’s resources are being used up at an exponential rate. When all the resources on earth are used up, the human race will need to either find another home planet or parish. When the age of technology came, scientists tried to find a planet suitable of supporting life and many planets were examined to see if they had water. Most of the planets were eliminated since they were either too far a distance to travel or too close to the sun. If water was found, it would be in a gas or solid state.

One of the planets that were not eliminated was Mars. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Mars has two satellite moons orbiting it which are called Phobos and Deimos. They were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall. Temperatures on Mars range from -220 F to 70 F. The atmosphere contains CO2, N2, Ar2, O2 and H2O. Mars is often called the red planet because of its iron rich soil and distinct colour. (Arnett, 1994)

The four long-term goals are to find pervious life; determine climate, determine geology, and prepare for manned missions. The first step was to see if life existed by trying to find if water existed on Mars. The second step is to try and determine the climate of Mars to see if it is too cold or hot for human life to exist. The third step is to see how the environment acts and the final step is to go to Mars and see if the planet is liveable or not. (National Research Council, 2006)

This report will go through the main objectives, all the missions, their findings and any future plans of the Mars exploration program.

2.0 Successful Past Missions

2.1 Mariner Program

The main focus of the program was to collect information about Venus, Mars and Mercury. Mariner 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 were sent to coll...

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...l continue until a man walks on Mars. The main goal of the past missions was to search for water. It was not until the launch of Curiosity in 2012 where physical evidence of water was found. Before this mission, the goal of the program was to take detailed pictures of Mars to create maps, find obstacles and choose possible dig sites. Since Curiosity’s discovery, Opportunity has found possible sources of water. These two discoveries set up future missions. On these missions, the rovers will search for life, try to find out how Mars was formed and update the data and pictures from previous missions. It is unclear exactly what instruments will be included in future missions but it can be reasoned that that they will include some items from previous missions along with new instruments to detect life and other things based on what the goals may be of the future missions