People Trashing Mars Could Jeopardize Future Missions

Humankind has been exploring Mars for some 50 years now.

Transcript

00:00One of the big pushes for some when it comes to setting up a colony on Mars is that Earth

00:08is having trouble.

00:10From climate change to microplastics getting in our water supply, humanity has really trashed

00:14the place up.

00:15But now the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs says we're also junking up

00:19space and especially places like the Red Planet.

00:23Mankind has been exploring Mars for some 50 years now.

00:25The Conversation reports that includes having sent 18 man-made crafts there, and none were

00:30ever planned to come back.

00:31That means that once their life cycle on the neighboring world is done, they're left there

00:34to die and become essentially litter on the unspoiled, rusty landscape.

00:38But it's not just the rovers and mission-based machinery, but also the peripheral debris

00:42caused by their landing crafts, parachutes and other non-mission gear that results from

00:46getting our robots and instrumentation to Mars.

00:49And we've even found some of that in unexpected areas already, swept surprisingly far away

00:53by winds.

00:54And now NASA is beginning to track all of the debris it can, hopefully able to prevent

00:58trashing Mars and of course keeping Perseverance from getting tangled in our own space trash.