Humans have left more than 7.5 tons of waste on Mars in 50 years, and no human foot has yet set foot there, the Daily Mail reported.
Kangri Kilic of West Virginia University analyzed the mass of all rovers and orbiters sent to Mars by subtracting the weight of those still in operation. The result is 7.1 points.
🇬🇧 [Blogged] On environmental pollution on Mars and lunar surface 😫😱
In our latest blog post, we inform about the current environmental degradation caused by space debris on the surface of Mars and Moon.
Find out how this enormous problem comes about https://t.co/ZfyqcGjHWD pic.twitter.com/LDngxU7XWd— Austr. Space Forum (@oewf) September 30, 2022
The debris includes discarded hardware, and defunct spacecraft that crashed on the surface, such as the Soviet Mars 2, which failed to land in 1971. It became the first human-made object on the surface of Mars.
Experts worry that debris could contaminate samples collected by the Perseverance spacecraft. The rover, which has been on Mars since February 2021, captured similar debris during its mission.
The “Ingenuity” helicopter filmed the landing gear with which they descended to the surface with “Perseverance”.
The Opportunity rover is no longer operational on Mars. In 2004, however, it photographed its heat shield along with debris littering kilometers from the surface.
There are now nine inactive spacecraft on Mars – Mars 3, Mars 6, Viking 1, Viking 2, Sojourner, Schiaparelli, Phoenix, Spirit, and Opportunity.
“Opportunity” weighs 160 kg – as much as a hippopotamus. As it moves around the Red Planet, the rover leaves a trail of debris.
According to Kilic, most of the devices are whole and for the space agencies, they are something like monuments, not trash. When their total mass is added up, however, it comes to almost 10 tons. Without the current ones, the number becomes 7.1 tons of human waste on Mars.
Humans may not have made it to #Mars yet, but over 7000 kg of our trash has!
It includes abandoned hardware & spacecraft that are now inactive or crashed on the Martian surface (like Soviet Union's Mars orbiter 2 from 1971).
Read: https://t.co/gn9S4F5P6s
📸: NASA/JPL-Caltech pic.twitter.com/iwPZUbYsvZ
— The Weather Channel India (@weatherindia) September 30, 2022
