10 years on Mars

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) has marked a decade of successful deployment of the mission to explore Mars.

10 years ago, NASA released the first self-propelled device to the surface of Mars, launching a challenging mission and has been successful so far. According to Space.com, NASA's Spirit self-propelled device , the size of NASA's golf course, landed on the surface of the red planet at Gusev hole on January 3, 2004 (US time), and three weeks later. In turn, Opportunity twins landed. According to the original plan, this pair of robots only explored Mars for 90 days, scouring the planet's surface in two different directions to find evidence that there was water activity there. Both self-propelled devices have detected many traces of the presence of water on Mars billions of years ago, and are increasingly demonstrating the ability to work sustainably far beyond NASA experts' expectations.

Within a decade, Spirit and Opportunity's digging ability helped mankind gain countless knowledge about the fourth planet from the sun in our solar system. Since then, astronomers have drawn a lot of information to play a fundamental role in Mars and its history. For example, in 2007, Spirit's front right wheel passed through a cut, and the results of the dust analysis showed sedimentation of crystalline silica, which formed under hot water conditions interacting with rock. This means that Spirit has discovered authentic evidence showing the presence of an ancient hydrothermal system, proving that at least in some areas of Mars have owned two of the conditions. necessary for life to appear: liquid water and energy.

Curiosity self-propelled device continues its mission to study Mars surface - (Photo: NASA)

For its part, Oppportunity also succumbed to many impressive contributions, especially after reaching 22 miles of Endeavor impact in August 2011.'When Opportunity enters the perimeter of Endeavor, a completely new mission opens up before us , ' said the project's principal investigator, Cornell University expert Steve Squyres. 'We have found abundant plaster veins and abundant clay mines. The presence of clay shows that the chemistry of the water here belongs to the neutral form, which means that it is suitable for bacteria that exist if Mars ever lived life , 'Squyres explained.

In 2010, Spirit entered the sand trap while roaming the surface of the red planet. After a year of testing, NASA had to declare that the official self-propelled device was removed from the Martian mission, but Opportunity continued to operate until today and did not appear exhausted.'Opportunity is in a perfect state compared to its true age,' Space.com quoted project chief John Callas of Pasadena's Kinetic Laboratory in California. He predicted that Mars still has many interesting secrets waiting to be discovered, and Opportunity continues to play an important role after 10 years of operation. According to calculations, the total distance Spirit moves on Mars surface is about 7.7km, while Opportunity has traveled 38.7km. If there is no uncertainty, Opportunity will soon break the international record set by the Soviet self-propelled Lunokhod 2 device from 1973, at 42km.

Following Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's Curiosity self-propelled device landed on the Gale hole in August 2012, upgrading the mission to study life on Mars to a new level. The data collected by Curiosity revealed the existence of an area called Yellowknife Bay . This is a place that could have harbored life at a primitive level a few billion years ago, in a freshwater lake that is thought to be about 50 x 5km. Experts are full of hope that these self-propelled devices will continue to harvest a lot of useful information about the red planet in the next 10 years.