In the passage, scientists put forward three reasons to explain why the spacecraft should land near Mars’s equator during the first mission. However, the listening material argues that the spacecraft should land near one of the poles, specifically refuting all points made in the reading.
Firstly, the reading claims that the extreme cold at Mars’s poles could cause equipment to fail, increasing mission risk. In contrast, the lecture argues that the core challenge is not cold itself, but drastic temperature fluctuations. Specifically, equipment expands during daytime heat and shrinks during nighttime cold, potentially leading to structural damage. Since polar temperatures remain relatively stable, landing there would minimize such thermal stress on the equipment.
Secondly, regarding fuel efficiency, the reading suggests that Mars’s fastest rotation at the equator would reduce fuel needs for departure launches. However, the lecture refutes this idea, emphasizing that the critical issue is producing fuel on Mars rather than saving fuels shipped all the way from the Earth. As is known to all, fuel production needs water, and water is abundant in the glaciers at the pole regions.
Thirdly, while the reading asserts that equatorial sunlight facilitates solar power and visibility, the lecture counters that polar regions receive six month of continuous sunlight annually——sufficient for mission operations. Moreover, the ice at the pole regions helps to block out harmful radiance from the sun, which directly reaches the surface at the equatorial regions.
