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Space Science

Terrestrial Garbage On Mars 59

Posted by timothy from the because-we-have-enough-of-it-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The garbage left behind by the twin Mars rovers was highlighted this week by the close-up view in panorama of the Spirit rovers' heatshield. Not including the various Viking, Pathfinder and some crippled probes, the human contribution of rover hardware to the martian surface now includes a few odd nicknacks, parachutes, heatshields, back shell,landing petals and many wheel tracks. It may be September before the rovers themselves become part of the red planet's debris field."
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Terrestrial Garbage On Mars More

Terrestrial Garbage On Mars

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  • By the time we get there... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phillup ( 317168 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:44AM (#8726072)
    It will be "just like home".

  • Returning the favor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick.The.Red@ g m a il.com> on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:44AM (#8726076) Journal
    They'v been throwing their rocks at us [uoregon.edu] for years; we're just returning the favor.

  • Hmm.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by hookedup ( 630460 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:49AM (#8726136)
    Where's a giant spaceship that turns into a maid with a vacuum cleaner when you really need one..

  • Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:56AM (#8726228)
    While anonymous the coward submitting this story still doesn't have the guts to say why he listed all these facts. I'll have to guess he thinks it's a wrong to make that mess. Does anyone really think that's such a big mess?

    It's less mess than a single paper clip in my back yard. If that's the only mess we make on Mars, I'm going to be very sad and disappointed.

    Yes, I am a bleeding heart liberal quasi-socialist envormentalist. It's not like we're covering Mars with buckyballs or anything. :-)

    • Re:Cowards (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Agreed. This article submission would have been better if titled "Pics of our cool shit on Mars!"

      A few probes on mars if pretty close to nothing.

    • Re:Cowards (Score:3, Funny)

      by harrkev ( 623093 )
      Well, if the current tenants of Mars will just ask kindly, I am sure that we can clean up after ourselves.

      But they have to ask first.

      Preferably in writing...
    • Yes, I am a bleeding heart liberal quasi-socialist envormentalist. It's not like we're covering Mars with buckyballs or anything. :-)
      Newsflash! Buckyball ridden terran probe kills all marine life on Mars!
  • Remember Salvage 1 [google.com], where Andy Griffith plays a guy who wants to go to the moon to salvage all of the junk up there? Maybe he can reprise his role, and head off to Mars!
    • Oh my! TV Land (?) played an episode last year and I forced my wife to watch "the coolest space show of my youth". I switched to something else after about 5 minutes, embarassed for the actors on the show. Clearly my memory of the show far outshone the reality.

      The concept was fantastic, but the execution was miserable...
    • Hmm...that gives me an idea. Any fuel specialists and ex-astronauts want to join my team?

  • Martian Sanitation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dh2000 ( 71834 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @12:09PM (#8726362) Journal
    It's a travesty that the pure & honorable planet Mars now has the solar system's worst semi-sentient race befouling it's gloriously pristine dead surface with plastics and shiny metal.

    The only thing worse would be the filthy creatures actually setting foot on Martian soil!

    Vote for Martian succession this winter to keep the Martian surface clean!
    • Vote for Martian succession this winter to keep the Martian surface clean!

      I agree, it's time for the current Queen of Mars to step down, and make way for the next in line in the Martian royal court.

      Oh, did you mean secession [reference.com]? My bad.
  • or they'll be getting pretty angry that we're messing up their clean planet.

    "Tomorrow's forcast: Cloudy, slightly windy, with a chance of radio active alien debris coming from the Northern sky."

  • identifying some of the debris (Score:5, Funny)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @12:14PM (#8726426) Journal

    Although never positively identified, it was thought to be a piece of Kapton tape - an adhesive used often in aerospace applications.

    Reminds me of an old joke: The surest sign of poor engineering is wrinkles in the duct tape.

  • All Right!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by moncyb ( 456490 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @12:27PM (#8726572) Journal

    ...martian surface now includes a few odd nicknacks, parachutes, heatshields, back shell,landing petals and many wheel tracks.

    Everything I'll need when I get there!

  • Interplanetary dumpster diving time! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RalphBNumbers ( 655475 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @12:34PM (#8726681)
    All that expensive hardware just being thrown out as trash, what a shame.

    I'd be happy to give it a home!
    Can someone give me a ride to go pick it up?
  • In this PSA [o1.com] from redvsblue.com

  • yeee haw (Score:4, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @01:05PM (#8727030)
    and when we get there we'll find them rednecked martians with our rovers up on blocks.

  • Today's Trash is Tomorrow's Treasure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @01:13PM (#8727133) Homepage
    After seeing pictures of the debris on Mars a few weeks ago, I considered making a mock "Mars Enviromental Front" page protesting the Earth's littering and distrubing of the Martian ecology. But, truth can be stranger than fiction.

    Keep it in perpective! It's not that much debris and there really is no other way to carry out these missions.

    In a hundred years or so, when Mars is colonized, there will probably be museams at the landing spots of the various rovers with all their debris collected and displayed. People will pass by and ooh and aah at our antique technology.

    • Mars Environmental Front alive and well (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kippy ( 416183 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @02:27PM (#8727954)
      If you've read the Red Mars [amazon.com] trilogy, you know about the hypothetical conflict between Mars preservationists "the Reds" and terraformists "the Greens". While these books are set in the future, within the Mars-nerd community people are already starting to form similar ranks. From scientists who condemn manned missions as contaminating a virgin planet to people already doing research on what greenhouse gas mixture to use to heat up the place. There is a NASA debate [spaceref.com] on this that got some press [slashdot.org] recently.

    • Re:Today's Trash is Tomorrow's Treasure (Score:4, Funny)

      by hcg50a ( 690062 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @03:52PM (#8729076) Journal
      In a hundred years or so, when Mars is colonized, there will probably be museams at the landing spots of the various rovers with all their debris collected and displayed. People will pass by and ooh and aah at our antique technology.
      Yeah, in 100 years, preservationists will gather all that crap up and put it into museums.

      In 200 years, later preservationists will gather all the stuff out of the museums, and strew it over the landscape, to make it "as it was" when humans made the first robotic baby-steps in space exploration.

  • They make great reference points (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shiwala ( 93327 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @01:38PM (#8727374)
    Maybe the garbage will have useful navigation purposes:

    "Have the rover turn left at the heatshield and then go towards the parachute."
  • Next, I shall completely spoil the purity of the Sahara desert by dropping three parachutes and 72 bottles of sugared soft drinks on random locations across it.

  • Life on Mars (Score:5, Funny)

    by uslinux.net ( 152591 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @02:56PM (#8728339) Homepage
    Just think, in a few million years when we've wiped every bit of out existance from Earth, aliens will be able to land on Mars and deduce that a civilization was once there. Ah the irony.

    • Re:Life on Mars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by anubi ( 640541 )
      Yeh, at this time, you are modded "funny", however I think you are quite insightful.

      I have a very big curiousity about if they find anything kinda, well shall we say, of extraterrestrial origin, on the moon or Mars. My rationale being I have no idea how life really started on Earth. There are a few theories floating around stating the possibility of life being "seeded" on Earth by spaceborne visitors. Unfortunately, any evidence left by these spaceborne visitors will have been destroyed either by the el

      • What was that movie, Mission to Mars? Where they went to the "face" and there was a simulation. That sounds kind of like your theory.

      • Re:Life on Mars (Score:3, Informative)

        by unitron ( 5733 )
        You may wish to consult the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel" for prior art on that concept.
        • Interesting. I'll have to check for the Sentinel next time I'm at the bookstore. I guess I first got whiff of the idea of an old book, I think it was "Chariots of the Gods", and of course, the old monoliths of "2001: A Space Odessey ( Kubrick )". The idea seemed plausible enough - not enough to convince me that this was how life happened, but enough to make me leave this option open for further consideration.

          Given the age of the earth, and how I see as our own technology is giving way to things that h

          • Is another book you might be interested in. He discusses the cyclical nature of an alien civilization... great book.

          • Re:Life on Mars (Score:3, Informative)

            by unitron ( 5733 )
            "The Sentinel" is basically what became the part of 2001:A Space Oddessy where they dig up the monolith on the moon and it blasted everybody with that signal to the aliens who buried it in the first place advising them that humans had gotten advanced enough to get to the moon and find the thing. It was this story that lead to the collaboration of Clarke and Kubrick on the screenplay and movie and then Clarke wrote the book afterwards. Clarke was, if not the first, among the first to have the idea of an a

  • Hey! (Score:2)

    by slothdog ( 3329 ) *
    nicknacks, parachutes, heatshields, back shell, landing petals

    I've been looking all over for those! How'd they get up there?
  • It's bad enough that this idiot [toonopedia.com] keeps complaining about the view of Venus being obscured, now he has our crap up there to contend with. We DON'T NEED to give him another reason to blow us up and chase our cartoon characters around!

  • So long as we know what's important... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dinosaur Neil ( 86204 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @09:46PM (#8733011)

    This feels like a joke, but there are people who might well invest some serious effort in "Keeping Mars Clean". My advisor was involved in the Voyager "Grand Tour" mission back at JPL in the 70's and he was telling me that when the launch was first announced, a group of people protested that Voyager was "stealing energy" from Jupiter with its gravity-assist maneuver. They were concerned that if enough probes were sent that way, Jupiter's orbit would be irrevokably altered. No, really. Obviously not a lot of math skills involved...

  • Reminds me of an old commercial from the 70's. The updated version would feature a pair of NASA rovers driving across the Martian landscape. The rovers throw a bag of drive-thru trash out the window, which lands at the feet of a Native Ameri...er...Martian. The camera pans up and we see the native shed a tear. Shame on us! Don't we all feel terrible about the space program now? Please see "Wayne's World" for details.
  • The water we spread upon the sand, has become blood.

    I see a beast, and on the head of that beast...

    Nah, this story is stupid.
  • You should check out the dump on the other side of the moon. Who knows how much stuff is back there, with the moonbase and all. :D :D

  • So whats the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Friday April 02, 2004 @02:28AM (#8744863) Journal
    Gives the tourists something to see when they visit..

    Seriously though, apart from the possibility of earth microbes messing things up (also exagerrated, I believe) its no problem - this is a PLANET people, its a pretty big area..

    In the meantime we are becoming afraid of our own shadows, when it comes to space travel. For instance they decided to prematurely end the Galileo-Jupiter mission, even though the satellite was still operational (albeit low on fuel) for fear of loosing control of it and having it "contaminate" one of the moons. By all means, lets do some initial robot landings to check for microbes, but we should not be afraid to ultimately make human footprints in some of these places..
    • Prematurely?!?!? Galileo had long outlived its scheduled lifespan and completed its mission at that point. The spacecraft was *dying*. So, rather than lose all control of it in orbit and possibly contaminate a moon, they decided to end it with a bang and get a little more data at the same time. There was no gain for leaving it in orbit.

      Mod this parent DOWN.
      • Galileo still had propellent in the tanks, and in my view should have been left in orbit until failure. It was still working, hence the word prematurely. Look at Voyager - that is going on way beyond its operational lifespan, thanks to measures that conserve its resources. There would have been plenty to gain from another year or so of orbits - particularly some more infomation on Europa.. As it is, there probably will be at least a 20 year gap before JIMO gets to Jupiter again in 2023, or there abouts.
  • I believe this is an excuse for more government spending! We could create an overpriced, inefficient agency to ticket space litterers! (Yes I made up a word). You'd have to factor in expense of furnishing evidence, so I guess each offence should cost, oh say, roughly $24,000,000.
  • ...by leaving our garbage, we may be pissing off the microbes we are look'in for.

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