Why the Importance of Finding Water in Space?
Water is important for many reasons on Earth—farming, ranching, settlements, transportation, and recreation—in addition to supplying the human body with adequate nutrition and maintenance. A major part of our human and physical environments with 75% of the world’s food supply consisting of potatoes, manioc, wheat, maize, and rice—grown in what is considered the drylands.
Within this picture on a global scale are the influences of human and natural interactions, statistics have shown us that dryland ecosystems absorb solar radiation while also reflecting it, considered by many to be an Earth stage for human development. As we continue our search for water throughout space, we need to look back at our own evolution here on Earth—with many feeling our own origins were on the drylands of Africa. Today, developing land-use systems insure a good food supply and access to water regardless of the adverse conditions which affected it so bad throughout history. Risk management has become an evolving ability to survive against harsh and changing climates.
The missions to space have one main purpose—to find water and life—with a multitude of secondary reasons. This includes the same environment which Earth began with many years back: arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid land surfaces which influenced the lifestyles of developing civilizations. These types of land surfaces changed rapidly, such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which claimed a certain segment of cultural heritages and their ability to care for their families, forcing farmers from their own land into unwelcome cities for food and work. Causes and effects of dryland degradation have worldwide causes and effects, holding planetary consequences in the long term. For this reason, our fear of future unforeseen consequences regarding water shortages due to global warming comes into play with our search for water on other planets.
Searching for water in some form on Mars through the NASA Phoenix Lander Mission, or excitedly finding water on one of the many lakes on Titan, the Saturn moon studied by the international Cassini spacecraft, gives us reason to celebrate. So far, Titan is the only body in the Solar System other than Earth to have liquid on its surface that has been positively identified, according to a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory statement, which manages the Cassini mission of Saturn, its rings, and moons. With the identification of liquid ethane also comes about the component of crude oil, which is another story for humankind.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 7:07 am and is filed under Mars News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
