Mars Exploration: Why Should Humans Conquer the Red Planet?

In the solar system, Mars, Mercury and Venus are all close neighbors of the Earth. The orbit of Mars is about 17 million kilometers farther from the Earth than Mercury, and the orbit of Mars is about 10 million kilometers farther from the Earth than Venus. Why don't we explore Venus or Mercury in depth, but explore Mars instead?

Approaching Earth's Neighbors

We have relatively little exploration of Venus and Mercury, mainly because there are many factors that are not suitable for exploration. The environment of Venus is extremely harsh, and the atmosphere is mainly composed of carbon dioxide. At the same time, the surface temperature of Venus is between 465-485 degrees Celsius, and there are corrosive sulfuric acid clouds, which makes the probe face high temperature and corrosion challenges. In addition, the 17-level gale on Earth is only 56 kilometers per hour, but the wind speed at the top of Venus' atmosphere can reach 350 kilometers per hour, which also poses a huge challenge to the landing of the probe. The environment of Mercury is even worse. It doesn't even have an atmosphere, so the temperature difference between day and night is even greater. Based on such harsh planetary conditions and high costs, our exploration frequency of Venus and Mercury is relatively low.

On the other hand, although Mars is not the closest planet to Earth, it is the most similar to Earth among the known planets. Mars and Earth are both terrestrial planets with similar internal structures, including core, mantle, and crust.

The internal structure of Mars

Mars' rotation period is also close to that of the Earth, and both have seasons due to the tilt of the Earth's axis. Earth has a satellite, the Moon, and Mars also has two satellites, Phobos and Deimos. In terms of landforms, they both have mountains, plains, and canyons. For example, Earth has the highest mountain, Mount Everest, and Mars also has Olympus Mons as its highest mountain. These similarities make Mars one of the important targets for human exploration of extraterrestrial life and the mysteries of the universe.

Mars Exploration: Challenges and Innovations

Since the 1960s, humans have embarked on a journey to explore Mars. So far, the world has carried out more than 40 Mars exploration missions, and has successively achieved flyby, orbit, landing and patrol exploration of Mars. In 2021, the Tianwen-1 probe successfully landed on Mars, making China the second country in the world to achieve landing on an extraterrestrial planet. However, taking samples from Mars and returning them to Earth is still a difficult problem that humans urgently need to overcome.

The Tianwen-1 probe was successfully launched

Although the Tianwen-1 mission has achieved the goals of orbiting, landing and patrolling Mars in one step, the environment is more complex due to the much greater distance between Mars and Earth. Key technologies such as Mars surface sampling, takeoff and ascent, orbiting Mars, and planetary protection also need to be gradually broken through. At the same time, it is also very challenging to find candidate points on the surface of Mars with obvious traces of life. After arriving on Mars, how the probe can take samples to avoid contaminating Mars and ensure that the samples remain original is also an unknown challenge.

Faced with these challenges, as my country's second Mars exploration mission, the Tianwen-3 scientific research team has also taken a series of solutions: on the one hand, researchers have worked hard to break through key technologies and lay a preliminary technical reserve for the future continuous exploration and application of Mars. For this purpose, three methods were designed: multi-point surface sampling, fixed-point deep drilling sampling, and aircraft sampling, in an effort to collect different samples. On the other hand, they studied the impact of high temperature, radiation and other conditions on the potential biological traces of the samples. While carrying out the Tianwen-3 mission, researchers earnestly implemented international conventions and strengthened the prevention and monitoring of pollution. China will actively carry out international cooperation, jointly carry out research on the sharing of Mars samples and data with scientists around the world, and jointly carry out research related to the Mars scientific research station with various countries or scientific research institutions, and jointly contribute to the exploration of Mars.

Exploring the geological features of Mars and the possible origin of life

Mars is like the Earth's "brother and sister" in the solar system. By studying the similarities and differences between Mars and Earth, we may be able to discover information about extraterrestrial life. By exploring the evolution of Mars' background magnetic field, we can also provide reference for the long-term evolution of the Earth's magnetic field.

Martian landforms

The surface of Mars retains rich geological features, such as volcanoes, canyons, craters, etc. These geological structures record the geological evolution process of Mars. Through their study, we can understand the internal structure of Mars, crustal movement, volcanic activity, etc., and provide important reference for the development of planetary geology. For example, Olympus Mons on Mars is the highest mountain in the solar system. The study of its formation causes and evolution process will help us to deeply understand the formation mechanism of large volcanoes on planets. If life is found on Mars, even the most primitive microorganisms, it will have a major impact on the theory of the origin of life. This will show that the origin of life in the universe may be more common than we previously thought, providing new directions and ideas for the study of the origin of life.

Continued exploration of Mars will bring more mysteries about the universe and the origin of life to mankind. Mars exploration is not only a scientific pursuit, but also an important step for humans to expand their living space and explore the universe. Let us continue to embark on the journey of conquering Mars with curiosity about the unknown and the courage to explore, and open a new chapter for the future of mankind.

Some information comes from Xinhuanet, Science and Technology Daily, and Shangguan News

(Scientific reviewer: Liu Yong, researcher at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)