While NASA rovers on the surface of Mars look for hints of life, researchers back on Earth are studying ‘echoes of life’ from ancient basins – hoping that the two sites might be similar.
Electronics are not the only technology to have been miniaturized. Using the strange behavior of fluids in tiny spaces, microfluidic devices are critical to medicine, science and the modern world.
Flying the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars is the equivalent of flying one at about 100,000 feet on Earth. Tricky, considering the highest helicopter flight ever recorded maxed out at 42,000 feet.
NASA’s successful Mars landing will reveal yet more secrets from the red planet. But there is much we already know from Martian fragments that found their way to Earth.
Perseverance follows in the tracks of Curiosity. The latter’s touchdown on Martian soil in 2012 marked the first successful use of several pioneering space technologies.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Arizona State University
Of the three probes to reach Mars this month, only two will land. But they will add to our growing knowledge of the red planet, and the search for evidence of life.
Illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
In the future, people may be able to go to Mars.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com
Much of Mars’s surface is covered by fine-grained materials that hide the bedrock. The above bedrock is mostly exposed and it is in these areas that micrometeorites likely to accumulate.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
It’s established Mars was once a planet with surface-level water. So with multiple MARS missions starting next year, the key to seeking out martian life may instead lie in the contents of its ‘dust’.
Rovers including ‘Rosalind Franklin’ will pick up where Opportunity left off – trying to answer the question of whether there is, or ever has been, life on Mars.
Signs of life on Mars? These are the tracks of NASA’s Curiosity rover exploring the Martian landscape.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mars has long captured our imagination, from claims of canals to Martian attacks and now our latest NASA exploration to look inside the red planet.
If you went to Mars, you’d need to be able to survive an extremely punishing environment. This picture, taken by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, gives you an idea.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.
I’ve worked with NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Project for 16 years. If you got yourself a ticket to Mars, here’s how I’d advise you to prepare. And by the way, any mistake could kill you.
Once people get there, Mars will be contaminated with Earth life.
NASA/Pat Rawlings, SAIC
NASA’s InSight Mars lander touches down Nov. 26, part of a careful robotic approach to exploring the red planet. But human exploration of Mars will inevitably introduce Earth life. Are you OK with that?
The InSight Lander mission to Mars is preparing for launch in May 2018. But there are seven (or eight) other planets to explore: why have we such a hang up on Mars?
Anastasiya (left) and myself working on the Haughton crater rim.
Mars Society
Will humans ever live on Mars? Whoever it is to get there first will benefit from the experiences of those who stayed in simulated Martian missions here on Earth.