20 Years of nonstop Mars coverage (video)

[Still Waters]

A new video shows just how extensively NASA has explored Mars over the last two decades.

The agency's robotic emissaries have been studying the Red Planet nonstop since July 4, 1997, when the Pathfinder mission touched down. The landing marked NASA's first Mars success since the Viking 1 and Viking 2 orbiter-lander pairs arrived at the Red Planet in 1975.

Eight other robots have followed in Pathfinder's footsteps to date, including the Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers.

https://www.space.com/37308-nasa-mars-exploration-20-years-video.html

[Noxasa]

If you want to get an idea of how barren and lifeless the Mars surface is you can't do much better than looking at the mars surface images from the rovers in a VR headset, aside from actually going to Mars.  :-)  You really get a sense of how remote living on that planet would be.  Much different than explorers on Earth from centuries past, there you have nothing from the environment that will natively support your life.  Your survival would be completely and totally dependent on your own efforts.  With that in mind it seems the Moon would be a better step for extra-planetary colonization than going straight for Mars.  At least you can get back to Earth in three or four days from the Moon in an emergency.  The Moon would allow us to flush out the kinks in the systems before going to Mars.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Noxasa

[Sundew]

3 hours ago, Noxasa said:

If you want to get an idea of how barren and lifeless the Mars surface is you can't do much better than looking at the mars surface images from the rovers in a VR headset, aside from actually going to Mars.  :-)  You really get a sense of how remote living on that planet would be.  Much different than explorers on Earth from centuries past, there you have nothing from the environment that will natively support your life.  Your survival would be completely and totally dependent on your own efforts.  With that in mind it seems the Moon would be a better step for extra-planetary colonization than going straight for Mars.  At least you can get back to Earth in three or four days from the Moon in an emergency.  The Moon would allow us to flush out the kinks in the systems before going to Mars.

It certainly would be a lot closer if a rescue mission was needed: a few days vs. a minimum of six months. They supposedly have found water in the polar craters of the moon, that might solve one issue, water is a heavy payload. It's a pity there are possibly habitable exoplanets out there, but no way to reach them. We had better take care of our own world, it's the only game in town for most/all of humanity.