Should We Continue to Explore Mars?

Author's note: I am doing a project on space, mainly focusing on Mars. At the bottom of this post is a VoiceThread for this project. In this piece I am trying to not repeat the same word and use synonyms instead.


Should we continue to explore Mars? What is the purpose? I believe that explore Mars is the right choice. NASA has been exploring the red planet for 15 years. They have been trying to find signs of life on the only other habitable planet in our solar system.

The first rover to land was the Sojourner Rover. It’s main goal was the study rocks and soil. Part of this study included looking for hints of water, which all life needs. Sojourner Rover, or Mars Pathfinder, lasted for 3 months before it ran out of battery on September 27th, 1997.

Because of the rover’s successes, NASA has continued to launch more rovers. Two of the the most successful rovers were Spirit and Opportunity, otherwise known as the twin rovers. Spirit was launched on June 10th, 2003. It’s goal was similar to Mars Pathfinder; find water or signs of it. Spirit found extreme signs of water including layered rock, dry riverbeds, and eventually ice caps. Opportunity was launched on July 7th, 2003 and its mission was to find signs of water, test what is in the atmosphere, and find land forms that could have been shaped by water such as volcanoes and mountains. The rover found dry riverbeds, volcanoes, and mountains. It also was able to test the atmosphere on regular basis. These rovers were only supposed to last 3 months but Spirit survived until 2009 when it got stuck in a sand dune and Opportunity is still running.

The latest rover to arrive at Mars is Curiosity. It was launched on November 26th, 2011. It’s goal were to drill into the ground and collect rock samples. It would then look for microscopic bacteria in the sample. It also is suppose to determine the mineral composition of the Mars surface. It’s last goal is to determine the long term atmospheric change. Curiosity is supposed to last 668 sols, or 23 Earth months.

As I was doing why research, I realized that NASA that was interested in finding life on Mars, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. I discovered that after Earth, Mars is the planet with the most hospitable climate in the solar system. It seemed that about 100,000 years ago, Mars would have been pouring water and possibly life. Could this vision of the red planet be restored? This led NASA to explore Mars in 1997 and continues to do so today.          


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