Slashdot Mirror
The 10th Anniversary of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
An anonymous reader writes: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is celebrating 10 years of service in its mission to study Mars from orbit. Recently it has discovered an ancient lake that might hold the best possible chance of finding life on the Red Planet. "MRO has discovered that Mars' south polar cap holds enough buried carbon-dioxide ice to double the planet's current atmosphere if it warmed. It's caught avalanches and dust storms in action. The spacecraft's longevity has made it possible to study seasonal and longer-term changes over four Martian years," Rich Zurek from Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Humanity has now had almost 20 years of continual presence on Mars either in orbit or on Mars. The Mars Global Surveyor reached Orbit of Mars in September of 1997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Global_Surveyor and remained active through 2006. Because of Mars Express, Opportunity and MRO for most of that time period we've actually had multiple Martian probes active during almost all of the last 15 years. Since the arrival of Curiosity as well as MAVEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAVEN and the Mars Orbiter Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission it is likely that we will have probes on Mars through when humans first arrive.
It is also worth emphasizing that this work is not mere exploration but has serious and substantial concerns. We need to find out how common life is. It is an important part of understanding if we need to be concerned about a Great Filter or not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter. Is the solution to the Fermi paradox that life is rare, or that complex life is rare? Is it something else? Or is something that civilizations do which drastically curtails their own lifespans? In that regard, exploration of the solar system is vitally important to the future of our civilization. And this is even before we discuss the fact that the more we understand about Mars the easier colonization will be.