The Conversation contributed the article to Space.com's expert voices.
Cagri Kilic is a research fellow at the university.
The surface of Mars has been explored by people for over 50 years. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs states that nations have sent 18 human-made objects to Mars. Humans have left behind a lot of debris on the planet's surface over the years.
I work on ways to track Mars and moon rovers. A tangled mess of netting was spotted by the Mars rover Perseverance, which spotted a piece of trash that had been thrown away. Scientists have found trash before on the red planet. There is more than one thing there.
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There is shiny silver litter on the red planet.
There are three main sources of debris onMars.
Every mission to the Mars surface requires a module that protects the spaceship. The heat shield and parachute are included in the module so that the craft can land softly.
There may be a lower heat shield and a parachute on the planet's surface if pieces of the module are discarded as they descend. The debris can break into smaller pieces when it crashes to the ground. Small pieces can be blown around by the winds on Mars.
There has been a lot of small, wind blown trash found over the years. The Perseverance rover spotted a large thermal blanket wedged in some rocks 1.25 miles from where it landed. There were debris from their landing vehicles in both Opportunity and Opportunity.
There are nine inactive satellites on the surface of Mars. The Mars 3 landers, Mars 6 landers, Viking 1 landers, Viking 2 landers, the Sojourner rover, and the Phoenix landers are included in the list. These are mostly intact and could be considered historical relics.
There is wear and tear on the surface of the planet Mars. There are pieces of the aluminum wheels that have broken off and are on the rover's track. Perseverance dropped a drill bit onto the surface in July of 2016 so that it could swap in a new, pristine bit so that it could keep collecting samples.
Trash is a significant source of debris from crashed spaceships. There have been at least two crashes and six lost contact before or after landing. It isn't easy to safely descend to the planet's surface on a landing mission.
The total mass of all the spaceships that have been sent to Mars is about 22,000 pounds. If you subtract the weight of the craft on the surface, you get 15,694 pounds of debris on Mars.
The risk of trash on Mars is the main concern of scientists today. The Perseverance teams are documenting all the debris they find and checking to make sure it doesn't taint the samples the rover is taking. The risk of Perseverance getting caught in debris from the landing is low, according to NASA engineers.
There is a reason that debris on Mars is important. The early stages of human planetary exploration can be seen in the craft and their pieces.
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