Mars has become a “garbage heap”! Humans left more than 7,000 kilograms of waste on Mars

The thermal blanket from the landing of the Perseverance rover is now discarded on Mars.

According to reports, Cagri Kilic, a postdoctoral researcher in robotics at West Virginia University, calculated the weight of all rovers and orbiters sent to Mars and came up with about 22,000 pounds (9,979 kilograms); minus the weight of the spacecraft currently orbiting the surface of Mars, 6,306 pounds ( 2860 kilograms), the weight of human waste on Mars is 15694 pounds (7119 kilograms).

This junk includes discarded hardware, inactive spacecraft and those that crashed on the surface of Mars.

Ingenuity helicopters photographed rover landing gear abandoned on Mars.

Scientists fear the junk could contaminate samples being collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is currently searching for ancient life on Mars.

It is reported that a lot of garbage is unavoidable, because many parts must be discarded to protect the spacecraft flying in the Martian atmosphere.

In June of this year, NASA spotted a bright light in the distance in images sent back by Perseverance, and the research team instructed the rover to take a look.

A few weeks later, Perseverance entered the Hogwallow Flats area and obtained a high-resolution 360-degree Mastcam-Z panorama. The image shows that the bright light is a reflection of the thermal blanket. Thermal blankets are used to protect the extreme temperatures the rover experiences during landing.

Perseverance’s companion Ingenuity helicopter also captured images of the landing gear it uses when it arrives with the rover on Mars in 2021.

The Opportunity rover is stuck in the Martian dirt and is currently dead.

Separately, NASA’s Opportunity rover was active on Mars from 2004 to mid-2018. The rover weighs about 347 pounds, the same weight as a hippopotamus, and is now stuck in the Martian dirt.

Opportunity also left a trail of junk as it traveled through Mars.

There are a total of 9 inactive spacecraft on Mars. Most of the spacecraft are still intact, and U.S. and European space agencies view them as historical relics, not discarded junk, said Cagri Kilic.