Astronauts would be exposed to two kinds of dangers as they traveled to and from Mars and worked on the surface: solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays.
The problem of Martian radiation is another tricky issue. But in the violent one Weir invents for his story, the fix wouldn’t last a day. That might actually be enough to do the job in the tenuous atmosphere that does exist on Mars. When a pressure leak causes an entire pod on Watney’s habitat to blow up, he patches a yawning opening in what’s left of the dwelling with plastic tarp and duct tape. It was exceedingly cool actually, and for that reason Weir’s liberty could almost be forgiven, but then the story tries to have it both ways with the same bit of science. “Plus, I thought the storm would be pretty cool.” “I needed a way to force the astronauts off the planet, so I allowed myself some leeway,” Weir conceded in a statement accompanying the movie’s release. That sets the entire castaway tale into motion, but on a false note, because while Mars does have winds, its atmosphere is barely 1% of the density of Earth’s, meaning it could never whip up anything like the fury it does in the story. Much more disturbing is what is arguably the most important plot device in the movie: the massive windstorm that sweeps astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) away, causing his crew mates to abandon him on the planet, assuming he has been killed. MORE This Graphic Shows All the Ways Mars Will Try to Kill Us If We Ever Get There One rule of thumb in space travel: never take the risk of a spacewalk unless it’s absolutely necessary-and in this case it’s not. But there’s no one in the cargo ship to see him waving and video cameras on both the arriving ship and the mother ship would make it possible to control the entire operation from an indoor console. Other errors are a bit more technical, as when an unmanned supply vehicle is docking with the Mars mother ship and an astronaut is sent outside in a spacesuit to wave it in like an airport worker on a tarmac. Even in a relatively near future in which it’s possible to travel to and from Mars, the laws of economics and politics still apply, and Washington would never spend the money on architectural glitz when the drearier but serviceable facilities are still in place. The Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena look nothing like the slick, futuristic places they appear to be on screen. Some of the movie’s errors are minor and even cosmetic. How many liberties can you take and how big should they be before you lose credibility? In the case of The Martian, the answer is mixed. The hard part about good science fiction has always been the fiction part. But still: Don’t expect all of the science to be what it should be. Mars's dust could be one of the major obstacles to exploring it, as dust can damage delicate electronics and cover over solar panels, as happened with the rover Opportunity which lost communication in 2018.So: Go see The Martian. And the story of Mars's size and development isn't only a matter of history, as it directly affects exploration there now. We're still not sure exactly how a dust storm can spread across an entire planet, but weather instruments on the Perseverance rover are studying the weather there to try to learn more (via Digital Trends).
Mars is the dustiest place in the solar system, and because of the low gravity it is easy for these small particles to be picked up by the wind. According to NASA, these global dust storms happen every few years and have so far only been observed on Mars. Mars's relatively low mass may also play a part in one of its strangest and most distinctive features: The global dust storms which can periodically cover the entire planet. Over time, this meant there was less and less water on the planet. But once it reached the atmosphere and splits into hydrogen and oxygen, the planet's lower gravity meant that some of the lighter hydrogen was lost into space.
Water on the surface was hit with the sun's rays and evaporated up into the atmosphere. Experts are still debating exactly how long the water was there and what happened to it, but a leading theory is that Mars once had a water cycle similar to Earth's (via Max Planck Society).
0 kommentar(er)
