Why Are We Researching The Interior Of Mars?

NASA’s InSight spacecraft has been used to study the interior structure of Mars, revealing details about the planet’s deep interior. This is crucial for understanding the formation and evolution of rocky planets in our inner solar system, such as Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, over 4 billion years ago. The InSight mission, which began in 2018, focused on the surface of Mars, but the stationary lander’s seismometer has revealed details about the planet’s core, its composition, and whether it is liquid or solid.

The study of Mars’ interior structure and processes is essential for understanding how the planet has formed and evolved. The InSight mission, the first interplanetary launch from the West Coast of the U.S., uses the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to record seismic waves passing through Mars’s interior. The seismometer collected data on the current state and size of the core, which can help scientists understand how Mars accreted and differentiated into layers, whether its core sustains a geodynamo that creates a magnetic field, and the origin of any magnetic fields.

The scientific reasons for going to Mars include the search for life, understanding the surface and planet’s evolution, and preparing for future missions. Exploring Mars helps scientists learn about momentous climate shifts that can fundamentally alter planets and look for biosignatures. InSight has three principal experiments to achieve this goal, gathering knowledge about the Martian crust, mantle, and core that have eluded scientists until now.

What is the point of studying Mars?

The search for life on Mars is a crucial question in understanding the existence of life beyond Earth. Mars is the most similar planet to Earth in the Solar System, with evidence suggesting it was once full of water, warmer, and had a thicker atmosphere. Understanding Mars’ surface and evolution is essential, as it experienced significant climate change while life arose and evolved on Earth. Planetary geologists can study rocks, sediments, and soils to uncover Mars’ history, including water history, volcanic eruptions, atmospheric effects, and geophysical processes. Samples of the atmosphere could provide insights into its formation and evolution, and explain why Mars has less atmosphere than Earth.

What do we know about Mars interior?

Mars has a dense core made of iron, nickel, and sulfur, surrounded by a rocky mantle and a crust made of iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. The planet’s reddish appearance is due to the oxidization of iron in rocks, regolith, and dust, which gets kicked up into the atmosphere. Despite being half the diameter of Earth, Mars’ surface area is nearly the same as Earth’s dry land. The planet’s landscape has been altered by volcanoes, impact craters, crustal movement, and atmospheric conditions like dust storms, creating some of the solar system’s most interesting topographical features. The planet’s surface is nearly the same area as Earth’s dry land.

Why are humans studying Mars?

Mars remains a significant goal for human exploration due to its potential to reveal life’s past and future, and potentially answer questions about life beyond Earth. Similar to the Moon, Mars is a rich destination for scientific discovery and a driving force for technologies that enable humans to travel and explore far from Earth. The distance from Mars varies from 33 million to 249 million miles.

Why do we think Mars is habitable?

The planet Mars has evidence of past warmer temperatures and stable liquid surface water for hundreds of thousands of years, which suggests a potential time for life evolution. The search for extraterrestrial life conducted by NASA is still ongoing, yet the answer remains uncertain. The possibility of extraterrestrial life on Mars remains a topic of interest within the scientific community.

Why do scientists think Mars has life?

In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity rover studied soil and rock samples, identifying key chemical ingredients for life, such as sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and possibly carbon, as well as clay minerals. These elements suggest a long-ago aqueous environment with neutral acidity and low salinity. NASA also reported that Gale Crater contained an ancient freshwater lake, which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life.

The confirmation of liquid water once flowing on Mars, the existence of nutrients, and the discovery of a past magnetic field that protected the planet from cosmic and solar radiation, strongly suggest that Mars could have had the environmental factors to support life.

However, the assessment of past habitability is not evidence that Martian life has ever actually existed. If it did, it was likely microbial, existing communally in fluids or on sediments, either free-living or as biofilms. The exploration of terrestrial analogues provides clues on how to look for signs of life on Mars. In 2018, NASA announced that organic molecules in sedimentary rocks dating to three billion years old were detected, indicating that some of the building blocks for life were present.

Why did NASA stop exploring the ocean?

NASA has continued its deep-sea research programme in the wake of the 1978 satellite failure, launching missions as recently as 2021. This is despite the dissemination of misleading information about the abrupt cessation of the programme.

Could Mars have had life before?

A study suggests that ancient Martian life may have initially prospered, but it would have rendered the planet’s surface covered in ice and uninhabitable due to the influence of hydrogen consumed from and methane released into the atmosphere. The abundance of hydrogen in the Martian atmosphere could have provided energy for methanogenic microbes around 4 billion years ago, at a time when conditions would have been more conducive to life.

Early Mars would have been much different from what it is today, trending toward warm and wet rather than cold and dry due to large concentrations of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, both strong greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Mars may have been a little cooler than Earth at the time, with average temperatures hovering most likely above the freezing point of water.

Is Mars a dead planet?

A study by University of Arizona researchers has identified an active mantle plume in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars, which is considered an “essentially dead” planet due to its relatively cool nature. Elysium Planitia is the second largest volcanic region on Mars and is home to the most recent volcanic eruptions, which occurred just 53, 000 years ago. Since landing on Elysium Planitia in 2018, NASA’s InSight lander has recorded several seismic events, which are called “marsquakes” on Mars.

These events occur when the planet’s topmost layer breaks due to the movement of molten rock underneath. The seismic and volcanic activity in Elysium Planitia is beyond what would be expected on a cooling planet, leading the researchers to hypothesize there might be an active mantle plume underlying the region. Mantle plumes are upwellings of hot, light rock rising from the middle layer of a planet to its crust. On Earth, scientists have discovered at least 28 mantle plumes that have created hotspots of volcanic activity.

Why are we fascinated with Mars?

Mars has fascinated humans since its reddish hue in the night sky, distinguishing it from its shimmering siblings. In the late 1800s, telescopes revealed intriguing patterns and landforms that scientists initially mistakenly ascribed to a Martian civilization. Now, we know there are no artificial constructions on Mars, but we have learned that the dry, toxic planet might have once been as habitable as Earth. Since the 1960s, humans have been exploring Mars to understand its growth and evolution, and whether it has ever hosted alien life.

NASA is hoping to land the first humans on Mars by the 2030s, and several new missions are launching to push exploration forward. Over the last century, everything we’ve learned about Mars suggests that it was once capable of hosting ecosystems and might still be an incubator for microbial life today.

Why are we exploring Mars and not other planets?

Exploring Mars is crucial for scientists to understand climate shifts and biosignatures, which could reveal the presence of life on the planet. Since the 1960s, humans have sent numerous spacecraft to study Mars, including flybys, probes, landers, and rovers. However, landing on Mars is challenging due to the thin Martian atmosphere, with over 60% of landing attempts failing. Four space agencies, NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), have successfully put spacecraft in Martian orbit.

The United States is the only country with eight successful landings on the planet’s surface, while the United Arab Emirates and China may join the club if their Hope and Tianwen-1 missions reach the red planet safely in February 2021.

What did NASA really find on Mars?

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover discovered a rock made of pure sulfur, a first on the Red Planet. The rock, which was crushed by the rover, revealed yellow sulfur crystals, a unique discovery on the Red Planet. Since October 2023, the rover has been exploring a region of Mars rich in sulfates, a salt that contains sulfur and forms as water evaporates. However, the recent discovery of elemental sulfur, or pure sulfur, is odorless and forms in a narrow range of conditions that scientists haven’t associated with the history of the area. The rover found an entire field of bright rocks that resemble the one the rover crushed, indicating that elemental sulfur is a unique and unique mineral found on Mars.