NASA Rovers Are Finding Human-Made Debris On Mars. This Is Why Its Treasure, Not Trash – Forbes

Perseverances parachute and backshell on the surface of Jezero Crater as photographed by NASAs ... [+] Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on April 19, 2022.

Remember the nail-biting seven minutes of terror video in 2021 of NASAs Perseverance rover parachuting onto Mars on a tether from its descent or jetpack stage after a 314 million miles journey?

What NASA didnt tell the watching world was that while its astrobiology rover was landing safely on the red planet it was depositing heat shields, parachutes, metal springs, foam, netting and other space litter all over the ancient river bed the robot was sent to explore.

Now Perseverance and its Ingenuity helicopter keep finding lasting mementos of its dramatic entry, descent and landing on Mars. Its not the first rover to do so, with NASAs Curiosity identifying bits of its own trash on the floor of Gale Crater.

Should we be littering Mars?

Yes. Yes we shouldand future humans will cherish our space litter from these, the first steps of exploration, according to scientists.

More images of "space litter" from its own landing was captured by NASA's Mars Perseverance on June ... [+] 23, 2022.

When we study ancient civilizations on Earth we look through their trash piles, said Dr. Bethany Ehlmann, a Professor of Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology and a Mars rover scientist. But these are not just trash pilestheyre artifacts of our first footsteps on Mars.

In short, our interplanetary trash will be treasure for space archaeologists of the near future.

The landing zones for these rovers will one day be national parks when humans eventually land on Mars, said Ehlmann. And the portions of landing systems and foam that may have come off as the rover landed will become historical markers.

Of course, it wont just be bits of foam and metal that get wedged in between rocks that will be the extent of the space litter of space agencies. Perseverance itself will, in due course, stop workingprobably in about a decade and likely due to a dust storm. A similar fate is in store for the Ingenuity helicopter as well as Chinas Zhurong rover, which is now exploring Utopia Planitia. NASAs Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity rovers stopped working years ago.

NASA's Opportunity rover's 2005 image of the remains of the heat shield that protected it as it made ... [+] its way through the Martian atmosphere.

With the exception of bits of NASA and ESAs Mars helicopter-aided Mars Sample Return mission, everything that goes to Mars dies on Mars. Glance at a list of artificial objects on Mars and youll discover that the red planet is covered in remnant-strewn landing sites. Some have been pinpointed and examined from orbit while otherssuch as several Soviet landers from the 1970s that didnt return any radio signalsare merely estimated. 1971s Mars 2 mission, which crashed, contains a vacuum cleaner-sized robot on skis and tethered by an umbilical cord.

A future exhibit in a future museum on Mars?

Most of this precious Martian history is covered in dust, as recreated in the 2015 Hollywood movie The Martian when stranded astronaut Mark Watney travels for a month across the red planet to dig out the remains of NASAs Pathfinder lander from 1987 to use its cameras to communicate with Earth.

All their tracks will be blown away but the hardware will be covered in dust and preserved, said Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist at the Flinders University of South Australias Department of Archaeology. She thinks that people have an emotional attachment to many of the rovers on Mars. Imagine if the Ingenuity helicopter was able to go photograph Curiosity or one of the older rovers covered in dustit would be such an amazing picture, said Gorman.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of its own "space litter" on June 13, 2022.

Since humans are yet to land on Mars its hard to imagine the red planet having protected national parks and monuments recognising humans first steps on the planet. Having similar constructs on the Moon, however, doesnt seem so far-fetched.

The Moon is just as covered in trash. Its estimated that there is about 500,000 pounds of garbage on the Moon from canisters, cables and cameras to and hammers, tongs and, yes, bags of human waste. Most of it, of course, is from the Apollo missions.

NASAs history office has a complete list of artifacts left on the Moon, and for good reason. As the Moon becomes more accessible to both national space programs and private enterprise, it is important that we protect lunar artifacts for both their historic and scientific value, reads the lists introduction.

Since theres no atmosphere on the Moon, the tracks of the first lunar roversand, more importantly, the footsteps of the first human moonwalkers in the late 1960s and 1970swill be preserved for many thousands of years.

Or will they? Once humans go to the Moon in greater numbers, and on private missions, those early Apollo landing sites are going to become targets for souvenir-hunters.

Apollo 11 - NASA, 1969. Astronaut Edwin E."Buzz" Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot, surveys the Apollo ... [+] 11 landing site on July 20, 1969. He has just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, with the Passive Seismic Experiment Package next to him. The Lunar Module "Eagle" is in the far right background. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

Theres an antiquities trade in artifacts looted from archaeological sites and there's also a very big collecting market for space stuff, said Gorman. You can imagine that collectors would pay huge sums of money for a piece of Apollo 11 and its something were really gonna have to watch out for.

Gorman thinks that were going to have to protect the Apollo sites, but prior to that re-visit them to get an idea of their current condition and thereafter to assess them as they change over time. Only then can we catch thieves in the act. Future lunar orbiters will have to monitor these places, keep track of their condition and also gather evidence of people looting themsuch as fresh rover tracks, said Gorman, whos now working on heritage management guidelines for the Moon. This stuff will be some of the most collectible everwe really need to start thinking about this very seriously.

Its a double-edged sword, of course, because if you produce a list of valuable, collectible items on the Moon then you instantly inflate their value. Were working towards an international consensus so if someone goes to the Apollo 11 landing site theyre breaking an international treaty, said Gorman.

The Apollo 11 site is the post-child for historical sites on the Moon, but theres another thats potentially even more significant to future archaeologists. In 1959 the USSRs Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. In 1957 there was the first satellite and just two years later a spacecraft hits the moon, said Gorman. Thats mind blowingthe first human site on the moon that's worthy of protection as well.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

See the original post:

NASA Rovers Are Finding Human-Made Debris On Mars. This Is Why Its Treasure, Not Trash - Forbes