Human garbage has reached Mars and there are photos that prove it. Last Tuesday the team that works with the Perseverance rover, which has been on the red planet since last year looking for life in the Jerezo crater, shared on Twitter a piece of what appears to be the thermal blanket that was used to protect the rover from the high temperatures that occur during landing. “It’s a surprise to find this here,” as the rover’s descent occurred about 2km away, just over a kilometer away, the team wrote. “Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind?” they wrote on the social network.
This is not the only debris left by the rover on Mars. Last April, the Ingenuity helicopter caught a bird’s-eye view of the landing gear that helped it and Perseverance reach Mars. “Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” Ian Clark, a former Perseverance systems engineer who now leads the effort, said in a statement. bring Martian samples to Earth at JPL in Southern California.
He continued: “If they reinforce that our systems have worked as we think they have or provide even an engineering information dataset that we can use for Mars sample return planning, that will be amazing. And if not, the visuals are still phenomenal and inspiring.”
Perseverance’s primary mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life near its landing site, Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta.
Space debris a growing concern for space agencies
Mission debris left in space, such as boots, shovels and entire vehicles left on the Moon by the Apollo missions, can contaminate otherwise pristine planetary bodies .
On the other hand, as Earth’s orbit fills with more and more satellites and assorted space debris, leaving our planet to explore space becomes increasingly dangerous. All this space junk surrounding the Earth, including discarded satellites, burned-out boosters, screwdrivers, parachutes, and other debris, can pose a risk to the International Space Station.
Despite the above, the restrictions that protect the space from contamination are scarce today. Current space law hasn’t changed much since the Outer Space Treaty , which was drawn up in 1967 and isn’t very detailed. More than half a century later, as celestial bodies like Mars become garbage dumps, the loopholes in the treaty are becoming apparent.
Aparna Venkatesan, an astronomy professor at the University of San Francisco, said last month at an event at the American Museum of Natural History that to protect space from contamination, it needs to be a common heritage of human civilization. “Do we see space as our shared ancestry?” he asked. “Whose heritage is it and how do we honor it?”
