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CAP CANAVERAL, FLA. – In our family of solar systems, Mars is the next of kin of the Earth, the parent next door who has been captivating humans for millennia. The attraction will certainly increase with the arrival Monday of a NASA lander named InSight.
InSight should provide our best look at the deep interior of Mars, using a mechanical mole to dig a tunnel 5 meters deep in order to measure internal heat, and a seismometer to record earthquakes, strikes of meteorites and anything that could trigger the earthquake of the red planet. .
Scientists consider Mars a tempting time capsule. It is less geologically active than the Earth twice as large and therefore retains much of its beginnings. By studying the preserved heart of Mars, InSight can teach us how the rocky planets of our solar system were formed four and a half billion years ago and why they turned out to be so different.
"Venus is hot enough to melt lead, Mercury has a sunny surface, Mars is rather cold today, but Earth is a nice place to take a vacation, we would really like to know why a planet is going in one direction." another planet is going in otherwise, "said Bruce Banerdt, chief scientist of InSight, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Earthlings today are attracted to Mars for various reasons.
Mars – "an incredible natural laboratory" – is relatively easy to access, and the United States, at least, has a proven track record, said Lori Glaze, acting director of global science at NASA.
The icing on the cake is that Mars may have already been flooded with water and could have sheltered life.
"Trying to understand how life is – or was – distributed in our solar system is one of our key issues," Glaze said Wednesday at a press conference.
"Are we alone? Were we alone in the past?"
In two years, NASA will actually seek to prove the old microbial life on Mars, if it exists.
On Monday, the space agency announced that the Jezero crater would be the landing site of the March 2020 rover, which will collect samples and stock them for their return to Earth in the early 2030s. The old Network of lakes and rivers crater abounds with various rocks, making it a hot spot for the past life.
Repeat, life gone. Not here.
Michael Meyer, NASA's chief scientist for the Mars Exploration, said the Martian surface was too cold and dry, with too much radiation bombardment, for life to exist now.
The recorded observations of Mars – about twice the size of the Earth's moon – date back to ancient Egypt. But it was only until the 19th century that the Mars mania really
The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in the 1870s and described the channels observed as "canali" – Italian for canals. But with the Suez Canal recently completed in many minds, "canali" has been understood as an artificial channel, made by extraterrestrials.
Percival Lowell, an American astronomer behind the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona, decided that the channels were carrying water poles for intelligent civilizations living near the equator.
Lowell's reflections influenced H.G. Wells, author of "The War of the Worlds" in 1898. The 1938 radio broadcast of the science fiction novel terrified many Americans who thought the Martians were actually invading.
Ray Bradbury's 1950 classic novel, "The Martian Chronicles," continued its momentum.
Before the twenty-first century, Elon Musk, founder and science fiction fan, leads a real mission on Mars. He envisions hundreds of thousands of people flocking to Mars aboard gigantic SpaceX ships and colonizing the red planet to pursue the species.
Just last week, Musk revealed new names for interplanetary ships and boosters: Starship and Super Heavy.
Musk is so passionate about Mars that he hopes to die there someday, without however stressing the impact.
As NASA prepares for its own missions to Mars with crews, it immediately shifted its focus to the moon. An outpost in orbit near the moon could serve as a boarding point for the lunar surface and even for Mars, officials said. It would also serve as a test site near home before astronauts travel 100 million miles on Mars.
According to Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's scientific missions, all the observations and reports from NASA's robotic explorers on Mars will help the pioneers of the planet Mars.
It's the charm of Mars, according to scientists.
Going on Mars is "a dream," said Philippe Laudet, project manager for the InSight seismometer of the French Space Agency. "Everything is captivating."
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For full coverage of AP's Mars landing: https://apnews.com/MarsLanding
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The Health and Science Department of the Associated Press receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Scientific Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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