Speech 7 Research your topic " Mars Exploration"

Intro:

What is that one thing which makes humans stand out from all other species?

Explore. Humans explore and they never stop exploring. Even when they die, the legacy of knowledge continues to the next generations. 

How many have you watched the movie “The Martian?”

This is a movie about this guy who will be stranded on Mars and he finally manages to come back. It is still a fiction. No man has ever landed on the

If you have not watched the movie, I would recommend you to do so. The movie is made at the right time when NASA just announced there is liquid water on the Red planet. I am assuming everyone knows what NASA is and what it does.  I have been listening /viewing right from my young adult hood about space exploration satellites, orbiters, rovers, missions and all that did nothing to me but this movie did. It created so much of curiosity do some research on Mars exploration. Today I am here to share some interesting facts about the Mars exploration.

Body:

Now the Curious me want to learn about Mars and its missions happened so far and I had questions.

·         What is exploration of mars?

·         Why is it important to explore Mars? Why not other planets.  Why we keep going back to mars?

·         How many missions happened so far?

·         Which countries are doing this kind of exploration?

·         What is the typical cost for these kind of projects?

These simple questions unveiled much more information and artifacts.  With this information I got, now I would like to visit the Jet propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena near LA and see some of the stuff I read about.

1.       The exploration of Mars is the study of Mars by a spacecraft. This began in early 1960s.  Probes sent from Earth have yielded a dramatic increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and habitability potential.

2.       We have several other planet and the reason why we are after mars?

Reason being  Planetary alignments make mars feasible for missions every 26 months and a probe can get there in 9 months which makes perfect for any project to materialize with in that time. Distance is roughly 50 Million KM.

3.       Major countries involved in this study are the US and the USSR. India has joined the league with its mission called MOM (Martian orbiter Mission) in 2014. China, japan and ESA are involved too but could not do successful missions. So far 43 missions happened and only 18 of them are successful. Success rate of only 40%.

Even after feasibility studies, careful planning these kind of missions do fail. That’s why it is metaphorically used like “It’s not Rocket science “to emphasize the non-complexity while Rocket science is obviously complicated.

4.       Most of the initial attempts failed to put the probes in the orbits and once succeeded and the later missions were to land the rovers which can send high resolution pictures. After that success, NASA sent mini laboratories on rovers which can study atmosphere and the geology.  NASA now gained tremendous knowledge on successfully launching probes/rovers onto Martian atmosphere.

5.       Now let us talk money.

Spirit, curiosity, opportunity, phoenix, sojourner are the rovers that landed on mars so far. Rover is an expensive affair. I could get the number for the Curiosity which is 2.5 Billion USD.  You can imagine the amount of money going to this.

Orbiters could cost little less than that. MAVEN (Mars atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) which was put in orbit in Sep 2014 costed $672 Million.

Mangalyaan/Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) costed to 74 Million USD. It is the least budget successful mission so far. This is an elliptical orbiter which studies Martian atmosphere.

India took severe critic from within and outside of the world when they launched the mission for spending 70 million for interplanetary research while it has the problems with poverty and other things. In my opinion, both are different things and cannot be compared.  India spends millions of dollars on the movie industry, festivals like Diwali, separation of states, building of new capitals. It is close to 0.1% of the nation’s budget.

Conclusion:

So much of topography, geology, and atmosphere is studied in just 50 years. Liquid water is found on the Mars. I am sure by 2020, first human will be landing onto the mars and it will be the greatest land mark in the history like man landing on the moon. Looking forward for that day. It will not be a surprise when our future generations will be taking cruise rides back and forth to the mars.

All the facts were taken from Mars.nasa.Gov, Space.com and planetary.org.