A string of incredibly successful NASA orbiters and rovers launched since the mid-1990s has revealed Mars to be a world rich in all the resources needed to support life, and therefore future technological civilizations. A few years ago, methane – which can only exist on Mars as a product of life or of hydrothermal environments that can support life – was detected by the Curiosity rover. Then, in 2018, scientist using the MARSIS ground-penetrating radar on the European Mars Express Orbiter announced the discovery of an underground lake of liquid salt water near the Martian South Pole.
@cnet – NASA’s MRO viewed the “Happy Face Crater” on Mars in both 2011 and 2020 and found some changes in its complexion. The crater is located in the region of Mars’ south pole. That’s a frosty place, but it isn’t frozen in time. The landscape shifts in appearance, as seen by the differences in images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2011 and 2020.
The difference is in the amount of frost covering the ground. “The ‘blobby’ features in the polar cap are due to the sun sublimating away the carbon dioxide into these round patterns,” wrote MRO HiRise camera team member Ross Beyer in a statement Thursday. “You can see how nine years of this thermal erosion have made the 'mouth’ of the face larger.” Sublimation happens when a solid turns into a gas. [source]
On the basis of such data, it is becoming increasingly likely that we will discover not only the remains, but even living survivors of ancient microbial life. In early 2018, the SHARAD ground-penetrating radar team on NASAs MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) announced the discovery of massive ranges of glaciers on Mars, covered by only a few meters of dust, extending down from the poles to latitudes as far as 38 degrees north (same latitude as San Francisco) containing 150 trillion cubic meters of water, an amount six times greater than that container in the Great Lakes here on Earth. This same team also discovered gigantic underground caverns beneath the Martian regolith – potentially offering vast volumes of shielded habitation for future human settlers.
Northeast of Arsia Mons, a deep hole — one of four Tharsis volcanoes imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument aboard NASA’s MRO — measures roughly 330 ft (100 m) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; SPACE.com
Read: ‘Tube-ular Digs for Lunar and Martian Settlers’ | Like our burrowing mammalian forebears, surviving on the Lunar Surface and the Red Planet may begin with establishing permanence underground. @medium
Many years ago, the Russian space visionary Nikolai Kardashev outlined a schema for classifying civilizations. According to Kardashev, a type I civilization was one that had achieved full misery of all the resources of its planet. A Type II civilization was one that had mastered its solar system, while a Type III civilization would be one that had control of the full potential of its galaxy. All of human history up to this point – from the trek out of our African birthplace to the settling of the continents and then the linking together of the disparate branches of humanity through first long-distance sailing ships, then telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, satellites, and the internet – has been a process of our rise from a local Kenyan biological curiosity to a full-fledged Type I civilization. That transition is now nearly complete, and we stand at the beginning of a new history – our rise to become a Type II civilization capable of measuring itself against the further challenge of becoming Type III.
Nothing is inevitable, and nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Not all revolutions succeed. Some are suppressed by the forces of the old order. Others simply lose their way. We are surrounded by a living cosmos of unlimited possibilities. Will we ignore it or enter it? Will humanity retreat and allow itself to be, and to see itself, as mere passengers adrift in a sea of stars? Or will we step forward and, in taking hold of our solar system, take charge of our destiny, a species fully capable of contending with the challenges to come?
It’s a grand time to be alive. We are living at the beginning of history. We are present at the creation.
Robert Zubrin, ‘The Case For Space: How The Revolution In Spaceflight Opens Up A Future Of Limitless Possibility’
