The information that will be shown is from 2016, the historical failure rate in robotic missions sent to Mars, the number of ghosts we are creating on Mars, artificial ghosts for the moment and we hope it will be like this forever.
The estimate is 50% to 60% failure, depending on what is meant by failure, because for example the Soviets consider the Mars 3 mission a success, as far as possible, it is a success because it managed to land softly on Mars and send data, although only for 20 seconds.
The 2016 article analyzes 55 missions of which only 53% managed to do some useful science, that is, they achieved some degree of success, of usefulness, more updated historical statistics as of 2026 raise this rate to a little more, almost 55% and things are changing because we are gaining more experience.
In NASA's Martian missions this century it already has rates of 80%, they say 90%, but we are going to leave it at 80% because there are rovers that have been lost due to dust storms and they also say 100% for China, but of course, China has only sent one mission, the Tianwen 1, in 2011 it sent a mission together with Russia, the Yinghuo-1, which ended in disaster, but as the part that What went wrong was the Russian side, since the Chinese do not count it as their fault and from there came this whole story of the curse of Mars, we are leaving a space junkyard.
But no matter how high the success rate, the dangers of Mars for the first humans to go there are going to be multiple, some of which we have dealt with in other cases, for example, the toxic soil, toxic for crops, the problem is that it is full of perchlorates, it is the main toxic there is, sorry, in Martian soils, these compounds are everywhere and in much higher concentrations than here on Earth.
They are toxic because plants can end up dying directly or impede their growth, inadequate development and for humans also because they compete with iodine in the thyroid, so there is a risk of hypothyroidism, also metabolic problems and when they breathe even worse because they can have carcinogenic effects.
The solution is washing with water, it is the simplest solution, the problem is that water is needed, that is why it is so essential for any base on Mars to look for a place where there are deposits of water ice, luckily, it seems that there are quite a few, even near the Equator areas have been located that have water ice under the surface, with this you can wash the regolith of regolith which is, what is it called? the dust and rocks, the Martian soil.
The regolith can be washed, the water can be recycled and that waste can be eliminated through filters, the problem is that this washing generates waste that has to be deposited somewhere, there is another much more natural solution that I love and that is bioremediation, it is using bacteria, they take bacteria, they breed there and these specially chosen bacteria, because luckily there are zillions of different bacteria, these bacteria can reduce perchlorates and transform them into harmless substances, and also without oxygen they can extract oxygen of these of these elements.
In summary, on the one hand you would have clean soil, thanks to these bacteria you would have harmless substances and oxygen, you can also end up having the soil enriched with the organic matter and nutrients of those bacteria that you have used, because in the end the bacteria also end up dying.
There are other methods such as phytoremediation that would be similar to bacteria, but using plants or algae, the problem is that they need more water and catalysts and other systems, but bacteria for me would be ideal.
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