I’m recording this video just a few days
after ESA’s Schiaparelli lander smashed
onto the surface of Mars.
Apparently its descent thrusters shut off
early, and instead of gently landing on the
surface, it hit hard, going 300 km/h, creating
a 15-meter crater on the surface of Mars.
Fortunately, the orbiter part of ExoMars mission
made it safely to Mars, and will now start
gathering data about the presence of methane
in the Martian atmosphere.
If everything goes well, this might give us
compelling evidence there’s active life
on Mars, right now.
It’s a shame that the lander portion of
the mission crashed on the surface of Mars,
but it’s certainly not surprising.
In fact, so many spacecraft have gone to the
galactic graveyard trying to reach Mars that
normally rational scientists turn downright
superstitious about the place.
They call it the Mars Curse, or the Great
Galactic Ghoul.
Mars eats spacecraft for breakfast.
It’s not picky.
It’ll eat orbiters, landers, even gentle
and harmless flybys.
Sometimes it kills them before they’ve even
left Earth orbit.
At the time I’m recording this video in
late October, 2016, Earthlings have sent a
total of 55 robotic missions to Mars.
Did you realize we’ve tried to hurl that
much computing metal towards the Red Planet?
11 flybys, 23 orbiters, 15 landers and 6 rovers.
How’s our average?
Terrible.
Of all these spacecraft, only 53% have arrived
safe and sound at Mars, to carry out their
scientific mission.
Half of all missions have failed.
Let me give you a bunch of examples.
In the early 1960s, the Soviets tried to capture
the space exploration high ground to send
missions to Mars.
They started with the Mars 1M probes.
They tried launching two of them in 1960,
but neither even made it to space.
Another in 1962 was destroyed too.
They got close with Mars 1 in 1962, but it
failed before it reached the planet, and Mars
2MV didn’t even leave the Earth’s orbit.
Five failures, one after the other, that must
have been heartbreaking.
Then the Americans took a crack at it with
Mariner 3, but it didn’t get into the right
trajectory to reach Mars.
Finally, in 1964 the first attempt to reach
Mars was successful with Mariner 4.
We got a handful of blurry images from a brief
flyby.
For the next decade, both the Soviets and
Americans threw all kinds of hapless robots
on a collision course with Mars, both orbiters
and landers.
There were a few successes, like Mariner 6
and 7, and Mariner 9 which went into orbit
for the first time in 1971.
But mostly, it was failure.
The Soviets suffered 10 missions that either
partially or fully failed.
There were a couple of orbiters that made
it safely to the Red Planet, but their lander
payloads were destroyed.
That sounds familiar.
Now, don’t feel too bad about the Soviets.
While they were struggling to get to Mars,
they were having wild success with their Venera
program, orbiting and eventually landing on
the surface of Venus.
They even sent a few pictures back.
Finally, the Americans saw their greatest
success in Mars exploration: the Viking Missions.
Viking 1 and Viking 2 both consisted of an
orbiter/lander combination, and both spacecraft
were a complete success.
Was the Mars Curse over?
Not even a little bit.
During the 1990s, the Russians lost a mission,
the Japanese lost a mission, and the Americans
lost 3, including the Mars Observer, Mars
Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander.
There were some great successes, though, like
the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder.
You know, the one with the Sojourner Rover
that’s going to save Mark Watney?
The 2000s have been good.
Every single American mission has been successful,
including Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity,
the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and others.
But the Mars Curse just won’t leave the
Europeans alone.
It consumed the Russian Fobos-Grunt mission,
the Beagle 2 Lander, and now, poor Schiaparelli.
Of the 20 missions to Mars sent by European
countries, only 4 have had partial successes,
with their orbiters surviving, while their
landers or rovers were smashed.
Is there something to this curse?
Is there a Galactic Ghoul at Mars waiting
to consume any spacecraft that dare to venture
in its direction?
Flying to Mars is tricky business, and it
starts with just getting off Earth.
The escape velocity you need to get into low-Earth
orbit is about 7.8 km/s.
But if you want to go straight to Mars, you
need to be going 11.3 km/s.
Which means you might want a bigger rocket,
more fuel, going faster, with more stages.
It’s a more complicated and dangerous affair.
Your spacecraft needs to spend many months
in interplanetary space, exposed to the solar
winds and cosmic radiation.
Arriving at Mars is harder too.
The atmosphere is very thin for aerobraking.
If you’re looking to go into orbit, you
need to get the trajectory exactly right or
crash onto the planet or skip off and out
into deep space.
And if you’re actually trying to land on
Mars, it’s incredibly difficult.
The atmosphere isn’t thin enough to use
heatshields and parachutes like you can on
Earth.
And it’s too thick to let you just land
with retro-rockets like they did on the Moon.
Landers need a combination of retro-rockets,
parachutes, aerobraking and even airbags to
make the landing.
If any one of these systems fails, the spacecraft
is destroyed, just like Schiaparelli.
If I was in charge of planning a human mission
to Mars, I would never forget that half of
all spacecraft ever sent to the Red Planet
failed.
The Galactic Ghoul has never tasted human
flesh before.
Let’s put off that first meal for as long
as we can.
What do you think, have we largely beaten
the Mars Curse?
Are we ready to start sending humans to Mars?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
In our next episode.
Did you hear there are 10 times as many galaxies
in the Universe as we thought?
So, how many galaxies is that?
Oh, and make sure you stick around for the
blooper.
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