I am not convinced yet that it is
possible to locate hard evidence of life here.
Carbon based life likes to leave a mess of some sort somewhere and we see no smoking gun as yet. Yet this is
reassuring in one regard.
It is now plausible to cover a
patch of Mars with a large greenhouse and grow things in a controlled environment. A soil is possible.
Otherwise, we have to stay
underground and be completely artificial in our approach. Again we can do this and will have to in most
places. Mars can give us a break.
Our first expedition to Mars
should pack a large bubble shelter that can be inflated and contain
manufactured air. This will ease the
pressure on haulage, and living room and perhaps allow experiments in growing
that could allow an extended stay.
Curiosity rover finds conditions suitable for past life on Mars
The results are in from the analysis of Curiosity's first
rock sample, collected early last month, and they show that the Gale Crater was once an environment that was capable
of supporting life.
"A fundamental question for this mission is whether Mars could have
supported a habitable environment," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for
NASA's Mars Exploration Program. "From what we know now, the answer is
yes."
The data the scientists retrieved from the rover's Sample Analysis at
Mars (SAM) and Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments shows that the
rock powder contains clay minerals that are known to form in a neutral water
environment, not too acidic or alkaline, which is the perfect environment for
microbes to not only develop, but thrive.
"The range of chemical ingredients we have identified in the
sample is impressive, and it suggests pairings such as sulfates and sulfides
that indicate a possible chemical energy source for micro-organisms," said
Paul Mahaffy, principal investigator of the SAM instrument at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center
Curiosity has been on the Red Planet for just over seven months now,
slowly making its way from its landing zone to the base of Mount Sharp, where
it will start its primary mission — to search for evidence of past life on
Mars. On this slow journey, it has stopped at interesting locations on the way,
to test out its various tools and instruments, and its drilling efforts last
month were another of these tests.
The science team ran into some snags over the past two weeks, as the
rover first suffered a computer error just after its first successful drilling
and then had to power down as a precaution, due to massive solar storm that was
sweeping past the planet. However, now that the rover is back on track and
recovering, the science team now wants to take a second rock sample, to confirm
their findings, and get more data to explore the discovery further.
"We have characterized a very ancient, but strangely new 'gray
Mars' where conditions once were favorable for life," said John
Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at CalTech. "Curiosity is
on a mission of discovery and exploration, and as a team we feel there are many
more exciting discoveries ahead of us in the months and years to come."
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