Humankind has been exploring Mars for some 50 years now.
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00:00One of the big pushes for some when it comes to setting up a colony on Mars is that Earth
00:08is having trouble.
00:10From climate change to microplastics getting in our water supply, humanity has really trashed
00:14the place up.
00:15But now the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs says we're also junking up
00:19space and especially places like the Red Planet.
00:23Mankind has been exploring Mars for some 50 years now.
00:25The Conversation reports that includes having sent 18 man-made crafts there, and none were
00:30ever planned to come back.
00:31That means that once their life cycle on the neighboring world is done, they're left there
00:34to die and become essentially litter on the unspoiled, rusty landscape.
00:38But it's not just the rovers and mission-based machinery, but also the peripheral debris
00:42caused by their landing crafts, parachutes and other non-mission gear that results from
00:46getting our robots and instrumentation to Mars.
00:49And we've even found some of that in unexpected areas already, swept surprisingly far away
00:53by winds.
00:54And now NASA is beginning to track all of the debris it can, hopefully able to prevent
00:58trashing Mars and of course keeping Perseverance from getting tangled in our own space trash.