• The Journal of the Petrological Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2009

Endlessly, mankind has been pursuing its dream toward understanding and conquering our neighboring planet, Mars since Mars has been identified as a planet. After the development of advanced science and technology of human race in 1960, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had initiated its dream toward Mars and finally at present mankind acquires numerous important clues of Mars through over forties of space programs toward Mars. Furthermore, mankind takes its effort in colonizing Mars within several decades. This manuscript introduces the history of space mission programs of Mars up to date and major scientific findings to understand the Mars.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.373-387
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• 2023

Scientific exploration of extraterrestrial planets has gripped human imagination since the advent of space travel. Human missions to Mars could produce insight into the essential questions of how, when and where life began on Earth. Such missions would only be feasible using local space resources materials, a concept called in situ-resource utilization (ISRU). The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough review of the currently available Mars soil simulants and to determine those with geotechnical properties most appropriate for vehicle mobility studies. Sourcing and processing are considered since full-scale studies require bulk quantities of material on the order of tens of tons. This review identifies the simulants with the highest fidelity to Mars wind drift soils. In addition, recommendation guide for mars soil simulant development made.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.14-26
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• 2012

The only extraterrestrial life detection experiments ever conducted were the three which were components of the 1976 Viking Mission to Mars. Of these, only the Labeled Release experiment obtained a clearly positive response. In this experiment $^{14}C$ radiolabeled nutrient was added to the Mars soil samples. Active soils exhibited rapid, substantial gas release. The gas was probably $CO_2$ and, possibly, other radiocarbon-containing gases. We have applied complexity analysis to the Viking LR data. Measures of mathematical complexity permit deep analysis of data structure along continua including signal vs. noise, entropy vs.negentropy, periodicity vs. aperiodicity, order vs. disorder etc. We have employed seven complexity variables, all derived from LR data, to show that Viking LR active responses can be distinguished from controls via cluster analysis and other multivariate techniques. Furthermore, Martian LR active response data cluster with known biological time series while the control data cluster with purely physical measures. We conclude that the complexity pattern seen in active experiments strongly suggests biology while the different pattern in the control responses is more likely to be non-biological. Control responses that exhibit relatively low initial order rapidly devolve into near-random noise, while the active experiments exhibit higher initial order which decays only slowly. This suggests a robust biological response. These analyses support the interpretation that the Viking LR experiment did detect extant microbial life on Mars.