Like an adventure. This is how Mexican astrophysicist Julieta Fierro sees the recent arrival of the mission Perseverance to Mars, which has managed to document in real time the landing of the exploration vehicle that will search for vestiges of life that disappeared millions of years ago on the red planet.
The Mexican scientist pointed out that this new NASA mission will reveal some hidden secrets that explain why Mars became a desert planet, when about 4,000 million years ago it had characteristics similar to those of Earth. “Mars was a world that had water, atmosphere, maybe life, but something happened to it and it became deserted,” the astronomer told the conference. At the conquest of Mars, organized by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
With Perseverance Technological developments are also advancing that will allow space exploration in a different way in the future. “This is the first time a mission has taken a helicopter to another world to take pictures to detect the most important rocks and bring them to Earth,” says the scientist with great enthusiasm.
According to Fierro and his colleagues, Dr. Antígona Segura and Luis Franco, it is possible that the disappearance of life on Mars was due to strong changes in the greenhouse effect of the planet that wiped out the atmosphere. “It’s important to know what happened to Mars, because we don’t want the same thing to happen to Earth,” says Dr. Fierro. “Mars had liquid water in the past, active volcanoes, polar caps with carbon dioxide and water,” explains Antígona Segura, a doctor at the UNAM Institute of Nuclear Sciences. “Perseverance he captured images of a delta in which there was a missing river, “he added.” The new exploration vehicle has the ability to detect organic material and would allow us to see possible microfossils, “he said.
Has there been climate change on Mars?
Dr. Segura explains that Mars has experienced climate change that has affected the planet’s atmosphere. “The greenhouse effect reduced carbon dioxide and stopped warming the planet. It lost water and as the atmosphere was lost, the planet cooled,” says Antígona Segura. “Everything we discover is important because at some point we want to transform Mars. In 300 years it will be a habitable planet,” says Julieta Fierro. “We want to have missions so that they can survive there with greenhouses and sources to produce fuel. in situ“, Adds the doctor.
Due to the plutonium-based energy source it carries, Perseverance You can continue to transmit images of what you discover over the next 18 years. Julieta Fierro says that the Martian delta that has been seen these days, “is very similar to the Coahuila desert”, where there was a river millions of years ago. He shared his impressions of the crater in which the vehicle landed: “On the edges of this crater there are limestones, such as those found in the rocks of the Earth produced by marine organizers.”
Dr. Fierro, enthusiastic about this new step of humanity, stressed the importance of basic science and the need for countries to continue investing in research, despite the most difficult times of the pandemic. “This time we are accompanying this great adventure and we are part of this great deed and we are able to face these challenges even in the most difficult moments,” he said.
He also believes that the United Nations should meet again and decide whether the new discoveries belong to one country or to all of humanity. “The United Nations needs to discuss again whose products are the different stars, it would be unfortunate if we said that the 4,000 extrasolar planets discovered are ours,” Fierro said.
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