9 Strangest Things Floating Around In Our Solar System

5. The "Galactic Ghoul"

Space travel is tricky, and a large proportion of our missions to the stars actually fail, including almost two thirds of Mars missions. Sure, human space exploration is still in its infancy, but could there be something else at play? The Galactic Ghoul or the Mars Curse is how some people refer to the high failure rate of our missions to Mars, conjuring up images of some great martian beast, subsisting on a diet of space probes and rocket fuel. So, is there really something messing with our space probes? Probably not, and almost certainly not a great galactic ghoul. There's an outside chance that there is some kind of unaccounted for interference out there that might be messing with our instruments. However, a much better explanation is that space travel is hard. Seeing as we send a large amount of technology to Mars, it being our closest neighbour, the failure rate is going to be proportionally higher. Now, if a giant space demon suddenly comes swooping out of the sky, I'll be the first to eat my words but, until then, leave the ghouls and curses to J K Rowling.