The below image is a Self-portrait by Curiosity on Mars in October 2015. Curiosity is a car-sized Mars rover explorer that was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, after a 560 million km journey.
Mars is often called the red planet. The reddish color of the Martian surface is due to the high iron oxide (Fe2O3), also known as iron (III) oxide or hematite, content in its regolith.
A question…
What are the corrosion resistance properties for landed spacecraft and structures that will support surface operations for the human exploration of Mars?
The below link is a paper titled — Corrosion Resistance of Materials in the Mars Environment– that presents the results of a one-year project, funded by NASA, to conduct a theoretical study on the effect of the Mars environment on spacecraft materials.
