From Trash to Time Capsules: Advocating for the Preservation of Orbital Artifacts

If the principle for the diligent camper is to Leave No Trace, anthropologists are advocating for a similar strategy as humanity expands across the solar system. While gathering the debris that human beings scatter in space may not always be practical, they argue that we should at minimum document their existence and consider them as heritage relics.

The urgency of this necessity intensifies as the quantity and duration of our expeditions to Mars grow. This forms the basis of the discussion in “The emerging archaeological record of Mars,” an article released on December 16 in Nature Astronomy by scholars from the universities of Kansas City, New Mexico State, Cornell, North Carolina State, and the Spanish Astrobiology Center.

These extraterrestrial relics consist of human-operated probes, landers (spacecraft that land), rovers, nets, parachutes, thermal blankets, and helicopters, notably Ingenuity, which completed over 70 flights on Mars during NASA’s 2020 endeavor. Archaeologists should also document non-movable artifacts, such as human footprints and trails created by vehicles. Collectively, the researchers assert, these signify humanity’s space heritage, intrinsically connected to our species’ evolutionary journey of migration that extends from Africa to the moon and beyond.

“As we advance into the upcoming phase of human exploration, we aspire to collaborate to ensure sustainable and ethical human colonization, safeguarding cultural resources alongside future extraterrestrial exploration,” the authors expressed.

The archaeological narrative of humanity on Mars commenced in 1971 when the USSR’s Mars 2 and Mars 3 crashed onto the red planet’s surface along with their PrOP-M rovers. The outcomes were mixed and notably short-lived; challenging landings and a global sandstorm were detrimental. In 1976, the United States successfully landed Viking 1 on Mars, which operated for more than six years. Subsequent missions from China, Japan, Europe, and India to Mars have taken place, leading researchers to estimate that approximately 22,000 pounds of human-castaway items currently exist on the planet.

To this day, most of the focus directed toward these space artifacts—which, the authors emphasize, should not be labeled as “space trash or cosmic waste”—has revolved around their possible repercussions on future missions by contaminating Mars’s ecosystems. Although these concerns are valid, the artifacts should also be regarded as pieces of cultural heritage, with the paper advocating for enhanced collaboration between planetary scientists and archaeologists to document and oversee these resources.

Although the United Nations monitors objects dispatched into space, as of now, the authors noted, there “exists no systematic approach to documenting, mapping, and monitoring all heritage on Mars.” The prevailing thought is that Mars signifies our species’ first foray into exploring another planet, and any loss of this record would be irreversible.