Mars is already littered with heavy Earthly trash; expert reveals shocking numbers

Although we are a few years away from stepping foot on Mars, this has not stopped the accumulation of debris on the red planet. Cagri Kilic, a postdoctoral research fellow in robotics at West Virginia University, revealed the staggering amount of trash that has accumulated in five decades of Martian exploration. 

According to Kilic, Earth’s neighbour currently has 7,119 kilograms of debris, a number that he derived by analysing the mass of the rovers and orbiters sent to Mars in the last 50 years or so and subtracting the weight of the operational robots. Moreover, around 9,979 kilograms of equipment have been sent to Mars to date and around 2,860 kilograms are operational, Kilic wrote in The Conversation, per Daily Mail. 

The expert says that discarded hardware, inactive spacecraft and crashed spacecraft are the three main sources of debris on the planet. Notably, Perseverance and Curiosity are currently the two NASA rovers that are operational after landing on Mars in August 2012 and February 2021, respectively.

Prior to this, NASA sent three other rovers namely Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity. With each of the rovers weighing hundreds of kilograms, they carried a lot of weight composed of landing gear that later turned into debris. Recently, debris produced after the Perseverance rover's touchdown was spotted near its landing site-- the Jezero crater. Shared by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the images were taken by the Ingenuity helicopter. 

According to JPL, the helicopter spotted a "cone-shaped back shell" that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent along with the supersonic parachute, also used during the rover's landing. Prior to this, debris produced by the Opportunity rover's heat shield and Curiosity's parachute has also been photographed strewn across the Martian surface. 

Threats due to litter on Mars

Scientists are concerned about debris on Mars because of the potential harm that could be inflicted on future missions. According to Kilic, NASA engineers are using Perseverance to document the trash to determine if it could contaminate the samples being collected on Mars. So far, the rover has collected 12 samples (11 soil and one atmospheric) on the red planet and all of them will be brought to Earth under the Mars Sample Return Mission in 2033. Tap here to read all about it.