Mars is littered with 15,694 pounds of human trash from 50 years of robotic exploration

[Judi Lynn]

By Cagri Kilic published 8 minutes ago



shiny object on dark reddish surface
Rovers on Mars frequently come across debris, like this heat shield and spring, from their own or other missions. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

People have been exploring the surface of Mars for over 50 years(opens in new tab). According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs(opens in new tab), nations have sent 18 human-made objects to Mars(opens in new tab) over 14 separate missions. Many of these missions are still ongoing, but over the decades of Martian exploration, humankind has left behind many pieces of debris on the planet's surface.

I am a postdoctoral research fellow(opens in new tab) who studies ways to track Mars and moon rovers. In mid-August 2022, NASA confirmed that the Mars rover Perseverance had spotted a piece of trash jettisoned during its landing, this time a tangled mess of netting. And this is not the first time scientists have found trash on Mars. That's because there is a lot there.



All spacecraft that land on Mars eject equipment, like this protective shell, on their way to the Martian surface. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Where does the debris come from?
Debris on Mars comes from three main sources: discarded hardware, inactive spacecraft and crashed spacecraft.

Every mission to the Martian surface requires a module(opens in new tab) that protects the spacecraft. This module includes a heat shield for when the craft passes through the planet's atmosphere and a parachute and landing hardware so that it can land softly.

The craft discards pieces of the module as it descends, and these pieces can land in different locations on the planet's surface — there may be a lower heat shield in one place and a parachute in another. When this debris crashes to the ground, it can break into smaller pieces, as happened during the Perseverance rover landing in 2021(opens in new tab). These small pieces can then get blown around because of Martian winds.

More:
https://www.space.com/mars-littered-with-human-trash