MARS "there is life there isnt life! Now there might be? And now begins the age of pioneers and exp

Countless science fictions books and films have shown Martian armies attacking the Earth, marching across our planet and enslaving or eradicating any humans they come across. Obviously this hasn't happened ... yet!

In fact, Earth is preparing for an invasion of Mars, but not in the conventional sense. Right now a flotilla of space probes are assembling to storm our neighboring planet, but rather than being armed with heat rays, they're kitted out with the latest in scientific equipment.

Their mission? To learn all they can about the Red Planet, and perhaps even answer the question of whether it harbors alien life.

It's certainly an exciting time for Mars exploration. The rovers Spirit and Opportunity are still scouting out the surface and sending back incredible images. The Phoenix Lander is on its way to Mars right now, and should arrive at the Martian north pole on May 25. After this will come NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, a large rover that will launch next year and arrive in 2010. Finally, the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission is expected to hit the ground in 2014.

It's certainly an attack in force, and two generals planning this assault are Michael Meyer, a lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program and Luann Becker, a University of California, Santa Barbara geochemist.

To test for alien life the missions will look for organic chemicals — strong clues that living organisms are there. Becker has developed the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer, or MOMA. She explains, "MOMA is like a Star Trek tricorder because we can use it to cover the full gambit of measurements that will answer the question of life. Then we'll be able to address the difficult question of whether something interesting is there."

This kind of thing has been tried before with the Viking missions of the 1970s, although the results were frustratingly ambiguous. Says Meyer, "Part of the controversy was with Viking's Labeled Release Experiment. The concept was that if we added organics and water to the Martian soil, all the Martian organisms in that soil would go to town eating the organic matter. The organics would in the process be broken down into carbon dioxide gas, and we could measure that."

Basically, samples were warmed up and given food-like chemicals and then watched to see if any microbes reacted. Becker laments, "Viking was an excellent experiment if you think about the strategy behind it: going to Mars and heating a sample, something we do everyday in our laboratory. (But) we got ambiguous results — something might be there, but it might not be there. Anytime you get an ambiguous result, that's considered a non-result."

The same idea of hunting for organic materials is used for modern missions. Half the battle is knowing where to look by deciding which areas are most likely to give interesting results. "Location, location, location," says Becker. "That really is key. We're going to have to use every bit of information we get from the satellites currently flying."

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking high resolution photos of the Martian surface, providing valuable intelligence about landing sites. However, a "shotgun approach" is in the cards — scattering the various machines over different areas to sample a range of locations. Says Meyer, "We are sending missions to three different places. Phoenix is going to dig into the ice near the north pole. Mars Science Laboratory has a little drill, so it's going to go to wherever there's exposed bedrock and rocks lying around. ExoMars has a big drill, so it's going to go deeper down into the surface."

With all these missions on the way, hopes are high that we'll soon conquer Mars by uncovering its most guarded secrets. However, past attempts like Viking have proven that Mars is a difficult enemy to overcome. Still, lessons have been learned and many are optimistic. Victory could well be within our sights.

Credited to:- www.msnbc.msn.com...

NASA need to make up there minds...one minute they are saying "hey guy's nothing to see here move on"

The Next "hmmm maybe we should pollute another planet with our rubbish and see if there is life?

Surely all this money would put a man on mars who could bring all this back? or even do the experiments there?

Why Do they insist on wasting money?

Who's to say in a couple of billion years when we have nuked each other or been made extinct that mars won't develop? Martions billions of years from now might just do what we do...and there archeology will be based on metal objects we left behind....the solar system has had planets move through out its life through objects moving them and gravitational pull.

opinions?

thoughts and views welcome....

I for one think it's time we grabbed this space exploration by the balls and started building big starships and started travelling through space. forget all the ifs and buts lets just do it....65billion people on earth lets start looking for a new home....

meh?


No intrest?

I guess we all may be getting bored of mars.

I am fascinated with Mars, but the bulk of your post was taken from another article, and as for the 'build huge starships and start travelling' it isn't that simple:

For a start huge starships would have to be constructed in orbit and would take a lifetime to build; we don't yet have the technology available to travel interstellar distances and even if we could we don't have anything that could protect us from all the horrible stuff that lies past the heliosphere after we leave the solar system. Realistically we cannot pull of star travel ourselves, not unless we really do have the brains to back engineer alien technology, which I doubt we do.

As for Mars, the Phoenix Lander is due to touch down next month, with promising results I hope, when I say this, I simply mean that I think that they will find the right conditions for bacterial life on the surface whether or not they actually find the life is another matter. We should all keep our eyes and ears peeled, we might be pleasantly surprised!



[edit on 19-4-2008 by Smugallo]

let's see...dollar losing half of it's value in 3 years, US on the verge of bankruptcy, millions of people losing their homes, healthcare in shambles, incomes declining, war in iraq, thousands of jobs being lost every day, global warming, toxic drugs and other products from china, war on the middle class, loss of freedoms thru terriosts legislation........yeah....let's go to mars!!!!!!

reply to post by jimmyx


with you all the way mate! lets build a great big space ship and go!

Economy is bad anyway no better time to go!

lol