The future exploration and settlement of Mars is not only important, it is essential for mankind’s survival in our universe. Populating other celestial bodies in the solar system will help ensure that man will endure. No matter what we might accomplish in world peace, or global clean-up of our environment, there will still always be a danger from Near Earth Objects like asteroids, which could possibly destroy all that we have built and survived…
Despite all of this, exploration of the unknown is a given amongst humankind, as our past endeavors have proven, and until a shuttle mission in 2000, sent up to conduct radar mapping of the Earth, humans had mapped and photographed more of Mars than our home planet! The Mars Global Surveyor sent back thousands of high-resolution images as it orbited the red planet, stirring our imaginations with photos of the ‘face’ on Mars, and the gullies possibly carved by flowing water down southern facing slopes on the Martian surface. In 1997, the Pathfinder mission, with its small Sojourner rover astounded the masses with high-res pictures from the surface, something which had not been seen since the twin Viking missions of the 70’s… Now, we have a literal flotilla of spacecraft exploring Mars, from the Mars Odyssey orbiter, to the amazingly long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers, which have been roaming Mars from different sides of the planet, and sending back reams of data for an unprecedented four years now.
A manned Mars mission would seem to be the next logical step for us, with Terra forming ideas and the eventual colonization of the Red Planet to be handled by future generations, until we have a sustainable presence on another world. How do we accomplish this feat? If as much energy, and money was invested in space exploration as has been put forth on the issue of global warming, we would likely have at least taken the first steps for a humans to Mars mission. Hopefully the international community will throw its combined space resources and funding behind such a mission when the International Space Station is complete, especially when you consider that ISS is the first major space construction project utilizing the combined efforts and financing from 14 nations worldwide.
We must make an investment in mankind’s future NOW, so that future humans might live beyond some kind of catastrophic event here on Earth, so that man and all of our past history is not erased from the universe around us, forever…
