Interactive by Krista Fuentes
Base map: NASA/MOLA Science Team
Sources: "Martian gullies in the southern mid-latitudes of Mars: Evidence for climate-controlled formation of young fluvial features based upon local and global topography," by James L. Dickson et al., in Icarus, Vol. 188, pages 315–323, 2007 (gully clusters); "Updated Global Map of Martian Valley Networks: Implications for Hydrologic Processes," by B. M. Hynek et al., in Second Workshop on Mars Valley Networks, 2008 (valley networks); "Ice, Salt and Warm-Season Flows on Mars," a NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/UA/LANL/MSSS map, 2011 (seasonal markings); "Radar Sounding Evidence for Buried Glaciers in the Southern Mid-Latitudes of Mars," by John W. Holt et al., in Science, Vol. 322, Nov. 21, 2008 (buried glacier).
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8 Comments
Add CommentSome folks could argue that we have been spending too much effort and money on space exploration over the past 40 years when we should have been more focused on problems on our home planet of now 7 billion people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the arms race was more important than the space race.
The stagnation could also be even more stagnalescent by the shrink of the NASA budget.
Our reasons for going into space, going to the moon and going to Mars have been purely political. We only started our space program so that we could beat the USSR. It hasn't been a triumph of mankind as we may think it is, it was a triumph of the USA and that's why it needed to happen. Public interest in science has declined and the number of jobless science graduates is increasing. Nobody cares about science anymore, unless we can copulate science with other interests people will think it is useless. And as much as I would personally accept that learning and discovering new things is thrilling, it would not sit well with the general public unless it could be directly linked to the development of a prosperous nation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGerardus'tHooft has made strong and compelling arguments for
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispostponing mars settlement/exploration until we have conducted a thorough investigation of the earth's moon, Luna, involving science,permanent cities, terraforming, use of knowledge gleaned from this work to far better inform the hard and soft technology decisions propelling a necessarily later push for exploration of Mars, with the
goal of creating permanent human bases which would try to
be as self sustaining as possible. The moon, being much
closer to our earth home is a far better testbed and a
far safer/wiser place around which to make our inevitable
mistakes, due to its proximity to earth. See his web page
with 'visit to the moon' near the bottom with links to
good articles. It's at http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/
't Hooft won the Nobel Prize in physics for major work
discovering/developing The Standard Model in physics.
My vote is for putting efforts into solving problems here and now so that we can save the infrastructure to explore the rest of the universe some time later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDaniel, Kind of agree...then again we spend 99+ percent trying to solve the problems here and now and where is it getting us....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have plenty to learn from space telescopes and robotic probes without having to put humans into the mix. Putting humans in the mix makes things infinitely more complicated and expensive. If some private group wants to "go for the glory" of being the first manned expedition to wherever, let them pay for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEarly ideas of space travel were naive. We now know that Earth protects us from powerful radiation. There are no practical ways to shield space travelers yet, and until we can find a way to do this, robots are the most practical approach. As far as the moon goes, permanent colonies there have the same problem. Maybe the next evolutionary leap will not even be organic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough I agree that "robotic" exploration is more cost-effective, it is not what grabs the public's attention. We are suffering from a lack of enthusiasm as a nation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI always felt that the Cold War period brought forth a blossoming of science and technology. I think that we, as a world, should put less into war and defense, and more into innovation. Since I began poking around in the world of science in the 50's, I've always wanted to go to the moon. Personally, I think we should build our beach-head there. A shallower gravity well to move on from. I.d live underground if it was on the moon.