Was there life on Mars?

             NASA recently released to the media all the photos and videos of Mars taken from the Curiosity rover. Scientists believe that out of the eight planets in our solar system, Mars is the only living planet other than Earth. Because of this, scientists have been trying to explore Mars for decades. (Pluto is not considered a planet and is referred to as a dwarf planet) Mars is about a kilometer from the Sun. It orbits at a distance of 227.9 million km between the planets Earth and Jupiter. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which have a non-circular shape. NASA's first plans to send spacecraft to Mars were to map Mars with satellites and select the most important and suitable locations for landing and exploration. The Pathfinder spacecraft and sojourner rover were sent to Mars on December 4, 1996, and landed on Mars' Ares Vallis on July 4, 1997. The rover was originally scheduled to explore for a week to a month, but successfully explored the surface of Mars over a period of three months. Since October 7, 1997, the Sojoner rover has traveled 100 meters above the surface of Mars, sending more than 550 pieces of exploratory information and photographs to NASA, and more than 16,500 photographs sent by the Pathfinder spacecraft. More than 2.3 million sent data were sent, analyzing and reporting on more than 15 soil and rock chemical micro-inspections. NASA was able to send information about the atmosphere, weather, geology, soil and rock composition of Mars.

                On July 7, 2003, NASA launched the Opportunity and Spirit dual robots to Mars, and on January 3, 2004, the Spirit rover landed on Mars near the Gusev Crater crater. The Opportunity rover landed in the Meridiani Planum area on January 24, 20 days later. This area is considered to be a crater lake formed by a large asteroid in the past. The Opportunity rover explored the surface of Mars until June 10, 2018. 45.16 had traveled on the distant planet Mars. Explorations in areas including the "Eagle" and "Endurance" craters have found that in the past, Mars was a wetland and that microbes lived there. The Spirit spacecraft explored the Columbia Mountains, analyzed lava-formed rocks, and provided information on a variety of rocks, as well as meteorite eruptions and volcanic eruptions. Spirit Rover has discovered minerals that are more than ten times richer than the basic chemicals. (Magnesium and Iron Carbonate) These are created in well-watered environments. 90% pure silica is found in the "home plate" area. The Opportunity rover has discovered the "hematite" mineral formed in water. All of these experiments have revealed that Mars once had enough water to live on. One of the wheels crashed as the Spirit rover crossed the Gussev crater, ending its contact with Earth after March 22, 2010. Opportunity was inactive due to dust on the solar panels. NASA later announced that operations on the Opportunity rover would end on February 13, 2019. 

                On August 6, 2012, the Curiosity rover landed in the Aeolis Palus area near Mars' Gale crater and was able to send a lot of important information about Mars to NASA. Important research by the Curiosity robotic spacecraft has uncovered clear evidence of the existence of aquatic life on Mars. The Curiosity rover was equipped with 17 state-of-the-art cameras capable of capturing very clear close-ups as well as distant photographs. The Curiosity robotic spacecraft had the unique ability to analyze various rocks using laser beams to excavate the surface of Mars and obtain soil and rock samples. The Curiosity rover was a state-of-the-art laboratory internally for the analysis of these soils and rocks. These subtle missions were operated by NASA.

              Although the Curiosity rover was scheduled to operate for 668 days on Mars, the robot sent 2849 days on Mars, sending NASA a large number of 3D stereo videos, black and white photographs, and color photographs. John Grozinger, a project scientist at the Mars Laboratory of Science at the California Institute of Technology, said the exploration was aimed at finding water on Mars and obtaining data and information for future missions. Scientists say the Curiosity rover has discovered the element boron, which is needed to live like Earth, on Mars. These new discoveries and previous discoveries by rovers confirm the existence of water on Mars in the past. Scientists say chemical and mineral evidence from laser beams and analysis of soil and rock near the Gale crater confirms this idea. The robotic vessel found dry riverbeds, old beaches and salt-laden chemicals in the area. Excavations at the foothills of Mount Sharp in the Gale Crater have uncovered a 1,000-foot-thick layer of sediment deposited as mud in a past lake. Scientists estimate that an amazing amount of water may have flowed into these lakes to store such a large amount of sediment, and that the climate must have been hot and humid for about a million to ten million years. They further suggest that the Gale Crater may have existed as a lake filled with water billions of years ago.

              Glaciers are found at the North Pole and South Pole of Mars. Mars has four seasons, and the poles are polar and dark and very cold in winter.The ice sheet at the North Pole is made up of carbon dioxide frozen water that forms a layer of ice about a meter thick, and the ice sheet at the South Pole is found to be 8 meters thick. The asteroid planet is bitterly cold. About 95.32% of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide. Nitrogen is 2.6%, argon is 1.9% and oxygen is 0.174%. Mars has no ability to maintain temperature and there is little light after 2 p.m. As a result, the Curiosity rover was only able to take photographs during the day until about 2 p.m. The temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. In summer, the temperature near the equator is minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the polar temperature is minus 195 degrees Fahrenheit. Rocks freeze at night and evaporate during the day. Scientists believe that 100% humidity on Mars would make Mars a more suitable place to live. "In the past, Mars was hot and humid, with temperatures as high as 50 degrees Fahrenheit," said Michael Meyer, chief scientist at NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

                Scientists claim that the red color of Mars is due to the presence of iron on the surface of Mars. Scientists believe that Mars is an active planet and that life on Earth originated when its atmosphere was hot and humid. The mission of the Curiosity rover was to get a clue as to whether there were microbes on Mars in the past and to research their ability to inhabit it. Thus, the Curiosity robotic spacecraft discovered that in the past, Mars had a chemical composition suitable for microbes to live on. Sedimentary rocks in the Yellowknife Bay area have been found to contain vital chemical elements, such as sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon, which are essential for life. Video footage and photographs sent to NASA by the Curiosity rover show strong evidence of life on Mars millions of years ago. In these videos you can see the shape of the English letters N, A and F and the Roman numerals 2 3, 7, 9, 10 and 26 on the rocks. There are also images of a woman, skulls, remains of dead animals, and ruined buildings. There are also features like a pyramid, a waterway built on poles to carry water across a valley. Were these created by nature or were they created by a group of living things that inhabited Mars billions of years ago? Scientists are trying to answer this question.