Why Are People Not on Mars?

Mars should be quarantined.

By Robert L. Park Aug. 6, 2012
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/curiosity_rover_landing_on_mars_this_is_how_we_should_explore_the_solar_system_.html

The uneventful nine-month, 150,000,000-mile journey of
the Mars Science Laboratory Rover, which also goes by
the whimsical name Curiosity, ended with a harrowing 7-
minute landing in Gale Crater. Getting the fourth Mars
Rover into space was a piece of cake compared with
setting it back down. Curiosity will explore Gale
Crater for one Martian year (687 Earth days) to 1) look
for evidence of extraterrestrial life and to 2)
evaluate the habitability of the planet.

Sputnik gave birth to the Space Age on Nov. 4, 1957.
Barely six months later, seeking to reassure an anxious
nation, President Dwight Eisenhower shared "An
Introduction to Outer Space," a remarkable statement
from his Science Advisory Committee, with the American
public. A brief section titled "A Message From Mars,"
notes that much of what we wish to learn in space can
be gathered by instruments and transmitted back to
Earth at a small fraction of the cost required to send
scientists to other planets.

The Apollo 11 moon landing was hailed as the opening of
a new era of human exploration. The stars, it seemed,
must be just around the corner. Since the Apollo
program, however, no human has ventured beyond
low-Earth orbit.* What led to the quiet shelving of the
dream of interplanetary travel?

There seemed to be two NASAs in 1969: the NASA that
would build Hubble and explore the solar system and the
NASA that put together the Space Shuttle but found
itself trapped in low-Earth orbit. It was human
astronauts vs. virtual astronauts.

NASA was initially conceived as a civilian agency. The
science side has given us space telescopes and missions
that are still going strong to Mercury, Jupiter,
Saturn, and beyond. The Cold War side has its remnants
in plans to send people to Mars, despite physiological,
psychological, genetic, engineering, and other
obstacles.

Beginning with the Viking 1 lander in 1976, we've been
looking for life on Mars for 36 years-and we've found
zip. Carl Sagan's disappointment showed on his face in
1976 when the Viking 1 camera panned the horizon of
Chryse Planitia (the Golden Plain), revealing a barren,
boulder-strewn surface. Chryse Planitia is only a small
region of the surface of Mars, but so far, nothing has
softened the first impression that Mars is not a living
planet.

The 70 meter dish that is tracking NASA's Mars rover
Curiosity at the Canberra Deep Space Communication
Station at Tidbinbilla in Canberra, Australia.

Photo credit should read MARK GRAHAM/AFP/GettyImages.

If we sent astronauts to Mars, they would travel for
nine months and then have to sit on their hands for
another 18 months, awaiting the next conjunction with
Earth permitting departure. It's not a pretty picture;
countless millions of Earth organisms would hitch a
ride to Mars in every human gut and multiply in their
excrement while there. We would find life on Mars, but
it would look familiar. Mars should be quarantined.

The term rover refers to a self-contained mobile robot
that functions as an electromechanical extension of a
remote human operator. The first Mars rover was
Sojourner, used in the 1997 Pathfinder mission. An
operator, comfortably seated in Mission Control, sees
Mars through the eyes of the rover, which are far
better than human eyes; they can focus on a grain at
the foot of the rover or a distant mountain.  Sojourner
never broke for coffee or complained about the cold
nights. Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers, followed.
For a time they seemed almost immortal, but with
rovers, as with people, they finally just wore out.

Curiosity is bigger, faster, and handier with tools,
and it gets its power from plutonium-238. That's not
the bomb stuff; the 238 isotope is not fissile. It just
gets hot from alpha decay and generates electricity.
Humans have changed little in 200,000 years, but our
rovers get better with each mission.

It's been 36 years since Viking 1 and 2 searched for
life to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be an
abode of life. What is missing, and has been missing
for three decades, is a sample-return mission. But
that's a job for a rover. (And what NASA doesn't say
when it comes to searching for life on Mars is that the
most exciting discovery of the new millennium is the
abundance of extra-solar planets.)

"Will people ever visit Mars?" I am frequently asked.
"They already have," I reply.  "The great adventure of
our time is to explore where no human can ever set
foot."  Having become virtual astronauts, we will all
be able to see Mars through Curiosity's eyes.

--- Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the
University of Maryland.

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