...Mars is generally thought to be a dry lifeless wasteland, however at one point it may have possessed an environment alike Earth's. This theory has provoked scientists to delve deeper; looking for signs of current or past life on Mars. The lack of any vegetation or other visible organisms on mars indicated that the only life that may be found would reside in the dirt of the red planet. Instead of referring to the matter covering the surface of mars as soil it is referred to as dirt; for this matter to be considered soil it would have to be proven to contain organic life. The dirt itself has remained undisturbed for an unknown amount of years longer than mankind could measure without a sample of Mars. If a sample were to be retrieved then it...
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...ar Mars By: Amanda Baker The discovery of Mars is not credited to a single individual, but rather a multitude of astronomers and observers that range from the early Egyptians to the Babylonians, Greeks, and Danish. In the earliest days of Mars observation, all that was known about it was that it appeared to be a fiery red and followed a strange loop in the sky, unlike any other. “The Babylonians studied astronomy as early as 400 BC, and developed advanced methods for predicting astronomical events such as eclipses. They made careful observations for their calendars and religious reasons, but never attempted to explain the phenomena they witnessed. The Babylonians called Mars Nergal - the great hero, the king of conflicts. The Egyptians were the first to notice that the stars seem "fixed" and that the sun moves relative to the stars. They also noticed five bight objects in the sky (Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn) that seemed to move in a similar manner. They called Mars Har Decher - the Red One. Greeks called the planet Ares after their god of war, while the Romans called it Mars. Its sign is thought to be the shield and sword of Mars” (NASA, 2015). Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and referred to as the god of War. The planet probably got this name due to its red color; Mars is sometimes referred to as the Red Planet. Mars has been known since prehistoric times, and of course, it has been extensively studied with ground-based observatories. But even very...
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... After numerous hours of research on the colonization of the planet Mars we have collected five real life hurdles that could be a threat to sustaining life on a planet other than earth. This group only contains two people. I Josh Watson, and my wife Lesley Watson. We have both teamed up and have done separate research on this topic and combined our information together to compare and contrast. The first major issue would be Terra forming. Terra forming literally means “Earth Shaping”. To colonize Mars we would need to terra form Mars into a planet comparable to earth. Yes Mars has an atmosphere with winds, clouds, seasons and days that are 24 hours long, but Mars has no magnetic field, thus resulting in lethal doses of radiation to humans. There has been evidence that suggests that the remains of polar ice caps have a magnetic field and are safe from radiation. If nothing else works then we would be limited to those areas. It might be possible to turn the Carbon Dioxide rich air into oxygen just like plants and trees do on earth but there would still be major issues with the planet not having a shield for protection. The cost of a trip to planet Mars is another hurdle that gets in our way. NASA has the ability to build a vehicle to take astronauts to Mars, but due to Barrack Obama’s decision to cut the Constellation program in 2010 it appears that any trips to Mars would have to be paid for by funds available in the private sector without government...
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...Mars * Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and the second smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. * Distance to Earth: 140,000,000 miles. * Gravity: 3.711 m/s * Radius: 2,106 miles * Surface area: 55.91 million sq. miles * Moons: Phobos and Deimos * Mass: 639E21 kg Mercury * Mercury is the smallest and closest to the sun of the eight planets in the Solar System, with an orbital period of about 88 earth days. * Distance from Sun: 35,980,000 miles * Gravity: 3.7 m/s * Radius: 1,516 miles * Surface Area: 28.88 million sq. miles * Mass: 328.5E21 kg * Moons: 0 Neptune * Neptune is the eight and farthest planet from the in the solar system. It is the fourth largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Among the gaseous planets in the solar system, Neptune is the densest planet. * Distance from Sun: 2,798,000,000 miles * Gravity: 11.15 m/s * Radius: 15,299 miles * Surface Area: 2.941 billion sq. miles * Mass: 102.4E24 kg * Moon: Triton, Nereid, Naiad, Larissa, Proteus, Galatea, Despina, Thalassa, Neso, Halimede, Psamathe, Laomedeia, Sao. Uranus * Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun. it has the third largest planetary radius and fourth largest planetary mass in the solar system * Distance from Sun: 1,787,000,000 miles * Gravity: 8.69 m/s * Radius: 15,759 miles * Surface Area: 3.121 billion sq. miles * Mass: 86.81E24 kg * Moons: Miranda, Titania, Umbriel, Oberon...
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...“Mars” Physical Science April 9, 2012 When a person thinks of Mars he may think of many wonders. Some dream of traveling Mars while others simply wonders if there is life on Mars. I will talk about both dreaming and life on Mars, but first I would like to talk about the history of Mars. In 1968, NASA struggled to get the Apollo program back on track in the wake of the devastating launch pad fire on January 27, 1967, that had taken the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. While the nation awaited the resumption of the race to the moon, NASA scientist quietly continued their work on the Mars exploration program. At the time, planetary scientists were still grappling with the surprising results of Mariner 4 – a small pile of photographs of a desolate, crater-pocked world that seemed incapable of supporting life. Mariner 9 would complicate the picture, revealing an active planet, with volcanoes, canyons, and channels apparently carved by catastrophic floods. With those discoveries, the prospects for finding life on Mars – or at least evidence of ancient life – would rise again. But in 1968, Mariner 9 was still three years away. NASA’s decision to launch a mission to search for life on Mars was made at a time when few believed there was any life to be found. The Greeks named the planet after Ares, the god of war. The Romans later renamed it after their god of war: Mars. Little more was learned about Mars until the Renaissance, which marked the dawn...
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...Mars is not a habitable planet. If it was going to be habitable, there would have to be lots of changes to be made on Mars for anything or anyone to survive. Mars is a very cold place, about -23 degress C. For this reason neither organisms nor humans would be able to survive in this type of temperature. Penguins and polar bears would be able to live there due to the freezing weather. There is a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide which would make it difficult to survive without being able to breath. In order to create oxygen, plants would need to be produced. The surface on Mars is rocky, so flattening the surface would need to happen first. Then creating a dome just to grow plants would be necessary. Once the plants have grown, I would remove the dome so the plants could create and release oxygen throughout Mars. More domes would need to be built to produce more oxygen needed for survival. With more oxygen being in the air, organisms would be able to survive on Mars. With Mars being so cold it made things even more difficult to survive. The freezing temperatures make it virtually impossible for plants, organisms, and humans to survive. Without water, survival is also impossible; if Mars was closer to the Sun, the frozen ice would be able to melt and then create water for the living organisms. Before human beings could actually create homes on Mars lots of big changes would need to be done. People think they can just wear a spacesuit and be fine but then this...
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...Mars and its Future. On November 28, 1964, the Mariner 4 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. After 7 ½ months of flight, Mariner 4 reached the surface of mars and took the first pictures of the Martian planet. Since then we have launched more than 40 spacecrafts to mars, from orbiters that fly by the atmosphere to landers that have been on the surface of Mars (“10 things to know about mars”) . Today we still continue to progressively learn and to explore the famous red planet. Mars is the same age as Earth. The whole solar system and everything in it was formed the same time, about 4.56 billion years ago. One of the greatest scientific questions is if there's life on Mars. Since scientists know that Earth and Mars both experienced similar weather conditions in early history, and life eventually happened on Earth. Therefore life may have begun on Mars too. The big question is if life did start their, then how did it die out? Maybe there is still life on Mars, and it’s buried underground where conditions may be less hostile. The only way to answers all these questions is to explore Mars. Scientist call comparisons between Earth and Mars analogs. Scientists say that even though, the two planets are mostly different when it comes to the atmosphere, temperature, size, and the geologic processes on the two planets. Surprisingly there are similarities between the two planets, also. An example is, on Mars there are volcanoes, channels...
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...Tim Jones Rita Kiry Composition 6/23/2015 Race to Mars The race to Mars has many competitors and is a long way from being a reality, but there are many technological advancements being made to get to Mars. The list of companies range from large known aerospace companies to small aerospace companies that have been around for only a short time to nonprofit companies that only want to manage the trip. Even though there is many companies striving to be the first to put a man on mars. They all will have the same hurdles to jump and space to travel through to get there. Mars has always been a wonderment to mankind. Human eyes have looked in its direction since nearly the 17th century, but it wasn’t till 1965 that a satellite was close enough to get decent pictures of its surface. The only thing those pictures did was raise more questions than answers (Lockheed Martin). The only thing left to do was to put something or someone on its surface. Lockheed Martin built the first orbiter that took pictures as well as the first two landers to touch the surface of Mars. Lockheed participated in the Mars Odyssey mission by building the orbiter in which the mission was named. The Odyssey later became the main means of communication for NASA to the rovers on the surface of Mars. Lockheed has no plans to quit being in the cutting edge of sending satellites to Mars. NASA started the race to Mars with the launch of Mariner 3 on November 5, 196 which was the first flyby spacecraft...
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...Unit 2 Assignment 2: New Technology in my Field-Research and Essay Nanobots on Mars Nanorobotics on Mars Ryan Robert Smith ITT Technical School Abstract Putting such large equipment on other planets is not altogether as we know the Mars rover Curiosity has made some amazing finds in its short time on the Martian surface, suggesting that Mars was once a wet and fertile planet. Although these findings still in their infancy and not fully substantiated it still gives us time for pause wonder and awe. However one of the main issues with Curiosity is its size. About the size of an SUV which requires more than a million pounds of fuel at an enormous cost to get to the red planet. Limiting its range and over all likelihood to be practical. With curiosity carrying around 165 pounds of research equipment to go even farther would be exponentially expensive. With nanobot technologies not only can we save on costs concerning such explorations, you can also save on logistics. We can send not one or tens or hundreds or even thousands but tens of thousands if not more nanobots out into the solar system at a much more reasonable cost and too many locations. The first nabobs could arrive on mars as a cloud of “smart dust” each one about one-one-billionth of the size of Curiosity. From a drop capsule these sand grain sized robots dropped from an orbiting spacecraft studying or merely passing by the Martian planet dropping them to ride Mars’s lower gravity (about 38% less than Earths)...
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...Population Size……………………………………………..pg. 4 • Report 3&4 Mission Location and Description………………………..pg. 6 Impact on Social Structure/Economy………………………pg. 6 Energy Use and Generation…………………………………..pg. 7 Design of Colony……………………………………………..pg. 8 Transportation………………………………………………….pg. 9 Life Support Systems……………………………………………pg. 9 • References…………………………………………………………………pg.11 Project Statement Mission Location and Description The current operation is to advance to Mars and colonize. In order to so we must terraform the planet. Currently the planet is a husk of nothingness. On the bright side, ice caps have been discovered a few inches beneath the surface, so water will be available naturally in due time. The soil will take time to cultivate for farming as it is somewhat contaminated. “Water and sulfur and chlorine containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity’s arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover”. (NASA) The distance from the sun to Mars is 141.6 million miles. The location of Tyrrhena Terra, where we are developing, is at 18º south and 99º East. Climate Characteristics The terraforming process will begin with the use of genetically modified organisms. We are able to alter organisms so that they possess certain traits needed in accelerated terraforming. These organisms will be used to repair environmental damage. Currently only two organisms are used in synthetic biology projects, e. coli, and yeast....
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...Mars Climate Orbiter Project Abstract NASA launched Mars Climate Orbiter on Dec. 11, 1998, atop a Delta II launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Nine and a half months after launch, the spacecraft was to fire its main engine to achieve an elliptical orbit around Mars .However, in Sept, 1999 Mars space probe was ‘lost’. The failure was due to a number of issues related to project management. One of the issues was: two teams involved in the space probe development were using different systems of measurement – one was using metres, centimetres and kilogrammes, the other was using feet, inches and pounds. However, there were a number of other contributing factors. There was inadequate consideration of the entire mission and its post-launch operation as a total system Inconsistent Communications and training within the project. There was no complete end-to-end verification of navigation software and related computer models The project had failed to set clear success criteria for the project outcomes. The scope of the project had not been matched to the funding, leading to inadequate funding for defined outcomes. The project was lacking in good team working environment and adequate, appropriate staffing. The problem was found to be poor communication between, rather than within, different teams. Lack of better monitoring of contractors’ work. Later on, better trained personnel with project management courses were recommended. There was...
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...NO MISSION TO MARS Many points could be made about benefitting from a human mission to Mars and back, but I believe this type of mission would be a waste of valuable money. With our country already facing so many financial problems, it is in my mind, one of the least logical decisions to keep pumping money into this program. Besides discovering another life form or valuable resource, what would we have to gain from a human mission to Mars. Yes, of course there would be a morale boost or maybe a raised sense of patriotism, but I cannot seem to find reasons why this would be a necessary mission. I think our current knowledge of the planet itself would not allow us to be adequately prepared for human mission to the surface. Also, look at what landing a man on the moon truly did for our country. It started with joy and excitement, but proved no material gain; just more knowledge of our solar system and a different perspective from space. According to NASA’s website, this past November, a mission to Mars was sent, going by the name MAVEN. This stood for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, and its mission was to figure out why Mars had been losing its atmosphere. It also consisted of a unique solar wind ion analyzer that studied ions in the Martian atmosphere. This mission cost a whopping 671 million. This mission was by no means basic, however, it does not compare in my eyes to landing someone on the actual surface of Mars. Let alone this...
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...COLONONIZING MARS AND BUILDING SMART HOTELS Recently, space tourism and space colonization topics on the agenda. The works of NASA has reached so far and today, “life in the Mars” is not a dream. With these technological developments in space science, people had started thinking about going Mars trips. So many businessmen already spent so much money on space tourism. In this case, what comes to mind is, if today, it is possible to travel to Mars, why would not be impossible not to live there. As young entrepreneurs, our company aims to build smart hotels and houses on Mars with the help of the reliable and safe transformation that we supply. We thought that the world needs that kind of a company for two reasons: the natural structure will be disrupted in short time and moving in another planet will open new doors to reach other planets. According to the researches world’s natural situation is changing in a negative way because of the human intervention and these interventions are changing the natural structure. One of the most important changes is climate change and accordingly changes in the sea levels. In short time world can be under the water and people will need a new land to live. The other important factor is the possible effects of asteroids. These are not human based but emergency situations. If an asteroid hits the earth it creates an extreme force and will cause the extinction of many species. This is the reason that the world should have a back-up plan in this...
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...There are several companies researching and exploring ideas on how to get to Mars. Space X is one of those companies they were founded in 2002. The Headquarters of Space X is located in Hawthorne, Ca. and they design, manufacture and launch advanced rockets and spacecraft’s. Space X, is short for Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, it is one of two private companies that NASA has contracted to transport cargo to the International Space Station. (Robertson, 2013) Space X can launch cargo from approximately 5 tons to 53 tons on their two rocket designs right now, cargo services are available on the Falcon 9 space craft for about $56.5 million dollars to sub orbit. If you need larger payload capabilities Space X also has the Falcon Heavy which is capable of carrying heavier payloads. As of right now 6.4 tons or less will cost $77.1 million dollars or for loads over 6.4 tons will cost approximately $135 million dollars. (SpaceX, 2014) Elon Musk is the CEO and Chief designer of Space X and he also co-founded PayPal services. “The key thing for me is to develop the technology to transport large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. That’s the ultimate awesome thing.” Musk envisages a colony with 80,000 people on the red planet. Musk believes he can get this under way in the next 10 to 20 years with the first manned mission to the Red Planet. The key is developing a reusable rocket to help keep cost down. (Coppinger, 2012) “Tickets to go to the Red Planet will cost about $...
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...habitability on Mars, assuming variable conditions and ingredients favoring life on Mars. Westall et al (2013) analysed certain considerations to hypothesize that the potential emergence of life on Mars over time was not constant. There have been mineralogical and geological evidence supporting the availability of water and as discussed, there may have been possible routes where martian habitability could have flourished. Although there is adequately enough evidence signifying this concept, the study revealed the delicacy in concluding that certain elements and evidence relating to the habitability on Mars would have been in fact heterogeneous throughout its history. This hypothesis provides perceptions into the importance of assessing the habitability of Mars, impacting on the nature and conditions of life which will be critically discussed to support the liberation of heterogeneous conditions on Mars. Westall begins the articles discussing the theory that the appearance of water accelerates the introduction of life. However, he stresses the fact that from a microbial point of view, habitability can be very liable and misleading when assessing the conditions on Mars. A habitable zone can be defined as a rocky planet that can maintain liquid water on its surface (Kasting et al 2013). The importance here in this definition is the maintenance of water on a rocky planet. Westall made valid points when assessing the possible appearance of liquid water on Mars. He discourses the...
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