In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s arrival to planet Mars, Deputy project scientist Dr. Leslie Tamppari presented a summary of NASA’s research and discoveries. Within the last decade, over two hundred and fifty terabytes of data have been sent home by the spacecraft, giving us insight about the Red Planet during the ongoing search of water and habitable zones. The idea of water on Mars has such high relevance because it is a necessity to any type of living organism. Although present day Mars currently has no liquid water that is stable on the planet’s surface, physical traces of canals and dominant signs of past water flow have been found with use of MRO’s high resolution camera. The atmospheric
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A Lack of this protective layer is a key factor in what may have caused the depletion of the atmosphere on Mars. Without protection, Mars’ atmosphere may have been stripped off from solar wind particles over the 4.5 billion years of its existence. Dr. Tamppari also talked about NASA’s thousands of detections of minerals. Certain locations have layers of minerals that required a lot of water, and show that the environment has transitioned over time from a wet and neutral environment to more acidic and dry. The transition is being discovered as not so simple, with signs of either multiple, repeated transitions, or different locations changing with different characteristics. These mineral rich locations may have possibly been habitable in the past.
The purpose of exploring Mars is because it is the next destination for human space exploration. We must learn about its environment in order to protect valuable research equipment or lives that are sent into its territory. Because Mars and Earth have many similarities, it is an opportunity for us to learn more about our own planet as
A Lack of this protective layer is a key factor in what may have caused the depletion of the atmosphere on Mars. Without protection, Mars’ atmosphere may have been stripped off from solar wind particles over the 4.5 billion years of its existence. Dr. Tamppari also talked about NASA’s thousands of detections of minerals. Certain locations have layers of minerals that required a lot of water, and show that the environment has transitioned over time from a wet and neutral environment to more acidic and dry. The transition is being discovered as not so simple, with signs of either multiple, repeated transitions, or different locations changing with different characteristics. These mineral rich locations may have possibly been habitable in the past.
The purpose of exploring Mars is because it is the next destination for human space exploration. We must learn about its environment in order to protect valuable research equipment or lives that are sent into its territory. Because Mars and Earth have many similarities, it is an opportunity for us to learn more about our own planet as