Science & Nature

Trash piling up on Mars; humans are to blame

Missions from various nations have left so much of trash on Mars

As if contaminating the Earth is not enough, humans are now filling Mars with trash. The quest for colonising the Red Planet had begun a five decades ago, and many nations around the world have sent Mars missions to explore the neighbouring planet.

But they seem to have ended up littering the Red Planet with waste. As per a new report, Mars has more than 7000 kg of human wasteas of now. Going by a revelation by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, as many as 18 human-made objects have been sent to Mars by many countries around the globe. As many as 14 separate Mars missions have headed for Mars over the past fifty-year period.

These missions, sadly, have proved to be bane for the landscape of the Red Planet. When various countries sent their exploratory missions to Mars, they never had an inkling that such amounts of trash would be left behind. Going by NASA findings, the Perseverance rover came across a tangled mess of netting jettisoned during its landing. This wasn’t the first time that scientists have spotted trash on Mars.

Man killing Mars before even setting foot there

Alarming is the scenario, indeed. Debris on the Mars landscape has been piling up every time a mission lands. According to a report quoting Cagri Kilic, a research fellow at West Virginia University who specialises in ways to track Mars and Moon rovers, as much as 7,119 kilograms of waste is currently spread across Mars.

Mars Rover

In case you are wondering what kind of trash is piling up across the Red Planet, it has been reported that there is much debris including abandoned hardware, inactive spacecraft and those that crashed on the surface. And that also includes the Soviet Union’s Mars Orbiter 2 that landed on Mars way back in the year 1971.

Scientists are a worried lot

What is worrying is that, humans who have been contaminating the Earth with all sorts of rubbish, are now doing the same on Mars too. Scientists have expressed utmost concern over the manner in which humankind has managed to spread so much garbage on another planet.

And that too even before setting foot there! If we are not able to address this in a serious manner, there are chances that humans will end up killing Mars even before they realise they have done so.

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Sanjeev Ramachandran

A journalist with 23 years of experience, Sanjeev has worked with reputed media houses such as Business Standard, The Ne More »

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