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Piles of Trash From Decades of Exploration Could Put Future Missions at Risk - ScienceAlert
Sep 21, 2022 54 secs
In mid-August 2022, NASA confirmed that the Mars rover Perseverance had spotted a piece of trash jettisoned during its landing, this time a tangled mess of netting.

The craft discards pieces of the module as it descends, and these pieces can land in different locations on the planet's surface – there may be a lower heat shield in one place and a parachute in another.

When this debris crashes to the ground, it can break into smaller pieces, as happened during the Perseverance rover landing in 2021.

The nine inactive spacecraft on the surface of Mars make up the next type of debris.

These craft are the Mars 3 lander, Mars 6 lander, Viking 1 lander, Viking 2 lander, the Sojourner rover, the formerly lost Beagle 2 lander, the Phoenix lander, the Spirit rover and the most recently deceased spacecraft, the Opportunity rover.

Safely descending to the planet's surface is the hardest part of any Mars landing mission – and it doesn't always end well.

Subtract the weight of the currently operational craft on the surface – 6,306 pounds (2,860 kilograms) – and you are left with 15,694 pounds (7,119 kilograms) of human debris on Mars.

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