Category: Planets

Because no human being (at least that we know of) has ever walked on Mars, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding the planet. Because of orbiters that have gone around the planet, however, we have begun to make out what the surface looks like and we’ve discovered some interesting bits and pieces. One time there appeared to be a lifeform but turned out to be a piece of netting from a previous ship’s crash site, formations that look like spikes, and even what appeared to be a doorway on the side of a mountain.

One thing on Mars that has been the topic of conversation for many years, though, is the perceived “face” on the Red Planet. The Face on Mars is perhaps the oldest oddity of the planet, as the Viking 1 and 2 orbiters were the first to spot it all the way back in the mid-1970s. The face was a result of photographs being taken of the Cydonia region.

From those original images, there was a large formation that seemed to clearly resemble a human face. No matter what angle the photo was taken from during this time, all of them made it so that the face was seen clearly by the human eye. It was dismissed at first by NASA, but once it was seen again from different lighting and more than 30 orbits later, people got to talking.

Naturally, as humans who have a keen interest in life away from the Earth, there were plenty of people who theorized that there was life on Mars and that the Face on Mars was actually a monument of some type. Even with the photos all showing a clear “face,” NASA was still convinced that it was nothing more than lighting and a coincidental formation, but that wasn’t enough to quench the alien thirst of the public.

John Grant of the Center for Earth and planetary studies said that there was a misconception about what NASA was looking for on Mars. while many thought that NASA was looking for intelligent life they were actually searching for any simple forms of life. He went on to say that there were also particular formations on Earth that resembled humans but didn’t have nearly as much speculation as the one on Mars 

After the original photos, it had been more than 20 years by the time the Face on Mars was photographed again. This had some people feeling that NASA found more than they were leading on and trying to cover up any alien life. Gerhard Neukum, a scientist who worked on a Mars photography project, said that he received hundreds of emails asking to photograph Cydonia again because they didn’t believe NASA.

In 1998, the Mars Global Surveyor made its way to the Red Planet with the plan to record more imagery from the Cydonia region. Unfortunately for theorists, what they found on the next trip was not what they were hoping for. Instead, higher-resolution images showed that there was no face but the blurriness from the original pictures made it appear that there was.

Even then, there were many people who said that the higher-resolution images didn’t tell the whole story. they claimed that the pictures were taken from the wrong angle and that clouds obscured the vision of the Face on Mars. more images have been taken since then all of which have shown in higher resolution than the face we saw in 1976 is not what we would see with the human eye if we were to get that close to the Cydonia region 

The face on Mars has been photographed from different angles in the years that have passed. NASA has taken these photos from different angles and altitudes to show that the original image was nothing more than a coincidence caused by lighting and low-resolution cameras. Ray tracing has shown that the Face on Mars has a unique shape but does not actually resemble a face. 

Still, there are plenty of other formations on Mars that have interesting shapes that humans want more answers for, including pyramids, a bear’s face, and even formations that resemble characters from Sesame Street. Because we have yet to walk on Mars, there are still a lot of questions but hopefully in the coming decades will be able to answer many of these questions. If humans ever do indeed inhabit Mars, we’ll be able to get firsthand answers, but for now, we’re left wondering what type of life could be on Mars and whether or not they’re capable of carving facial formations.

For many, many years, people on Earth have talked about what it would be like to not just put a person on Mars but to have an entire human colony. This has been a massive part of science fiction work for decades and many who have worked in the aerospace industry have made plans to start human civilization on Mars.

So why hasn’t it happened yet? After all, for decades we’ve been hearing about how we’re “just a few years away” from Mars. It turns out that the logistics of settling on the Red Planet are a bit more complicated than even the wealthiest or smartest people realize when putting their plans into place. Here’s a look at what it would take to put humans on Mars for good.

Getting To Mars

First and foremost, to put people on Mars, we have to be able to even get people there in the first place. There have been a lot of manned missions into space, but none have reached 250,000 miles from Earth. In other words, we haven’t made it further than the “other” side of the moon. Just to put it in perspective, Mars is another 58 million miles after passing the moon.

With that said, we’d have to create a craft that’s capable of making it that distance with people onboard. With current capabilities, it would take nearly nine months for a craft to get all the way to Mars. Thankfully, there are no rest stops or fast food restaurants on the way that would delay the trip.

Shelter

Let’s say that we were capable of getting to Mars without much of a problem. Sure, we had to sit in our spaceship for months on end, but we finally made it. Now, there’s just the matter of where we stay. Presumably, there would have to be many, many missions with robots to build a shelter on Mars before humans can even think of colonization.

These robots would also have to be incredibly accurate and make sure that the shelter is sealed so that oxygen can flow throughout. The shelter would also have to be able to withstand temperatures that drop to below -200 degrees Fahrenheit, fierce wings, and harmful UV rays since the atmosphere of Mars is almost nonexistent compared to Earth.

Food

Now that the shelter is in place, people have to be able to eat and drink water while on Mars. There are plenty of foods that grow on Earth that we can just pick up and eat without thinking twice, but that’s not the case on Mars. There’s no known life on the planet, so we’ll have to bring our own. Bringing animals for meat would prove to be very difficult, though.

Bringing animals like chickens and cows on a nine-month journey would take a lot of care to make sure that they made it and that there’s enough for the new colony. It would be much easier for vegetarians as the climate-controlled shelter would still be able to allow for fruits and vegetables to grow indoors.

Water

The good news is that there is water on Mars. The bad news is that we don’t know its long-term health effects and how much of it we can actually use. For now, the plan on Mars is to extract water from minerals, but that’s a long and tedious process for not a whole lot of water. 

Water would have to be reused and recycled to the point where the water you drink in the evening may be the same water that you flushed down the toilet that morning.

Summing It Up

It sounds like the most difficult and expensive project in human history to colonize Mars, so why are we even talking about it? Is it because of resources? General curiosity? Whatever the reason, life on Mars would be no easy task and an overall logistical nightmare that would take several decades to even become feasible.

People in the 1960s said that it would probably happen not in their lifetimes, but in the lifetime of those that are alive now. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case, either, as we’re still very far away from planting a flag on the Red Planet.