There has been a lot of news from mars in the last few days, one of which is that nasa's insight mars rover is running out of time on its mission. One of them is that nasa's insight rover is running out of time on its mission because it is powered by solar panels, which are gathering dust in the last selfie it sent back from a martian dust storm that hit the rover. The insight rover is now getting less and less power, about a tenth of what it had when it first landed on mars, and in order to conserve its power, its mission will now focus solely on detecting seismic waves on mars and will not send back any more photos, which means this selfie will be the last one of the rover. If the dust is not removed from the solar panels in time, the rover is expected to terminate its exploration of mars soon and lose contact with humans at the end of this year.
There was also the case of nasa's maven mars rover, which suddenly went into safe mode in february this year and stopped all other activities, after nasa said it encountered problems with the rover's imu-1's regular power cycle and nasa scientists were subsequently unable to contact the maven mars rover. Then after almost 3 months of work, engineers finally solved the problems faced by the maven rover.
Curiosity discovers surreal phenomenon
Besides the bad news returned, there is also some good news from mars, or new discoveries. Here, nasa has announced a "Surreal" Phenomenon captured by the curiosity rover, the appearance of a cool rock on the surface of mars. It's not unusual to find rocks on the inhospitable surface of mars - after all, mars is extremely inhospitable and arid, just like earth's deserts or gobi desert areas, with all kinds of sand dunes and rocks everywhere - but the rocks photographed by the curiosity rover this time are rather unusual.
While rocks normally lie on the surface of mars, sometimes even covered in dust, the two cool rocks that curiosity photographed look delicate and defy gravity, extending upwards from the dusty martian surface as if they were 'growing' out of the ground. Nasa researchers say the spikes are likely to be cemented fillings of ancient fractures in sedimentary rocks, and that the rest of the rock may be made up of softer materials that have eroded away and ended up looking like the one in the picture.
Although it looks a little different from other rocks, similar sights should not be uncommon on mars. Previously the curiosity rover had also photographed what looked like a flower or coral-like object on the surface of mars, and at the time there were many people who thought it could be evidence of martian coral life. Of course, scientists said it was just a peculiarly shaped rock.
Is mars habitable?
In the photos returned from the rover, we see mars as a desolate world without a trace of life. As desolate and dry as mars looks, there are many who believe that mars could be a second home for us humans, and space agencies such as nasa hope to send astronauts to mars soon in the future. The question is, is mars such a suitable environment for us to live in, really?
If humans were sent directly to mars, it is clear that they would not be able to survive. It is a simple fact that by sending us to live in a desert area, the temperature would drop dramatically at nightfall and we would either die of starvation or cold outright. After all, desert temperatures are very cold at night, and likewise the nights on mars are very bitterly cold. The bottom line is that there is not enough food on mars and the oxygen content of the atmosphere is so low that we could not, in theory, survive under such conditions.
However, when we want to land a man on mars or migrate to mars, we definitely want to prepare everything in advance to make sure that everything is in order. For example, we might start by launching a series of robots to mars to create a mars base. Inside the closed mars base there would be a constant temperature and pressure environment with a suitable temperature and an air composition similar to that of the earth's atmosphere, where the astronauts would be able to breathe freely. In addition to this, these robots could be allowed to develop water resources on mars in advance and use the water resources of mars to grow some crops and solve the problem of food sources. Or decompose the water of mars to get oxygen and hydrogen to solve the problem of fuel for spacecraft or mars rover.
All in all, although we cannot live directly on mars, we can still survive on mars for a while after building a mars base or a mars community. Life on mars may not be the same as life on earth, for example, astronauts will need to wear spacesuits when conducting scientific research in the martian wilderness.