In this episode of Our Island Universe, why are we so interested in Mars?
Mars Orbiting Missions:
MAVEN
Odyssey
Reconnaissance Orbiter
Mars exploration rovers:
Curiosity
Opportunity
Spirit
Transcript:
We now know definitively that Mars must have had oceans of water on its surface. Today Mars is a dry, barren planet with polar ice caps. In order for running water, it must have had a thick atmosphere like Earth’s. Today its atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth’s. What happened to Mars’s oceans of water? What happened to its atmosphere? Did Mars host life in the past? Does it host life today? We don’t know have the answers to any of these questions and that is why we continue to send rovers and spacecraft to Mars!
Mars has been visited by more spacecraft than any other planet in the Solar System. Right now we have 3 spacecraft orbiting Mars — Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN which arrived at Mars this past September! MAVEN — the Mars Atmosphere & Volatile Evolution Mission is designed to explore Mars’s climate history. On the surface, we have the Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and as of August 2012 — Curiosity, the $2.5B SUV-sized robot inside of Gale Crater!
With these sophisticated science tools we are beginning to put the puzzle that is Mars together, and in the process, answer the biggest question in science — is there life beyond Earth?!