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Life on Mars? Why Not?
Guillaume Filion writes "IEEE spectrum has an interesting article about a new probe sent to Mars searching for life: 'Recent missions to Mars have focused on the search for water, past or present, as a surrogate for life itself. But now a British-led team is working to renew the search for life directly, fueled by doubts about the equipment that prompted NASA to declare Mars a dead world some 26 years ago.'"
I hope they find life and rush it back to Earth!
Just think of all the death it could bring!
Go now! Make SARS look weak!
Mars: Dead or Alive?
A miniaturized marvel of engineering aspires to rewrite the textbooks about life on the Red Planet
By Barry E. DiGregorio
Recent missions to Mars have focused on the search for water, past or present, as a surrogate for life itself. But now a British-led team is working to renew the search for life directly, fueled by doubts about the equipment that prompted NASA to declare Mars a dead world some 26 years ago.
If all goes according to plan, a Soyuz-Fregat booster rocket will lift off from Baikonur cosmodrome next month carrying an extremely compact and sophisticated life detection probe that might finally settle one of the most intriguing questions in science: did Mars once harbor microbial life-and is it still there?
The probe is hitching a ride on the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Mars Express orbiter as part of the agency's first home- grown mission to the Red Planet. Named Beagle 2[see photos], in honor of the HMS Beagle in which Charles Darwin made the historic voyage of discovery that led him to the theory of evolution, it was designed by scientists from Britain's University of Leicester and Open University in collaboration with Martin-Baker Aircraft and Matra Marconi Space Systems. Once the orbiter reaches Mars, Beagle 2 will be sent down to dig around on the planet's surface.
But even after it has dropped off its passenger, the Mars Express orbiter will not be idle. It will use a sounding radar called Marsis to search below the surface for water. It will have an ultraviolet and infrared spectrometer called Spicam to study the atmosphere over the course of a Martian year. And it will relay data transmitted from the lander back to Earth.
Did Viking get it wrong?
The first spacecraft with dedicated equipment to look for life on Mars were NASA's twin Viking landers, which touched down on the surface in 1976. Why send another now?
On board both Viking landers were miniature life detection laboratories, and some of the data they returned could indeed be interpreted as evidence for life on Mars. Yet the majority of the project's scientists became convinced that inorganic oxidants in the soil were responsible for the ambiguous data. The next year, NASA publicly announced its conclusion: that Viking had found no life.
Was the U.S. agency jumping to conclusions? In recent years, questions have been raised about the effectiveness of a key instrument-a combined gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer (GCMS)-that swayed most of the Viking scientists into the no-life camp. The GCMS failed to detect any organic molecules on the Martian surface at all, which posed something of a puzzle, as even the barren surface of the moon is host to some organic molecules. To explain the anomaly, scientists postulated a harsh chemical environment that supposedly made the planet self-sterilizing by actively destroying organic matter [see "Why NASA Said No to Life on Mars"].
To find out if this picture is correct, Beagle 2 is designed to search for organic material below, as well as on, the surface of Mars. In addition, it will study the inorganic chemistry and mineralogy of the landing site, says Mark Sims, the Beagle 2 mission manager who is based at Leicester University.
Without question, the Beagle 2 lander manifests an enormous leap of scientific engineering. It costs only US $40 million versus Viking's $1 billion, and weighs in at a mere 60 kg at launch, as opposed to 661 kg for each fully fueled Viking lander. In its set of scientific instruments are the first ever optical microscope to fly to Mars, as well as a gas analysis package (GAP) that will directly challenge or confirm the results of Viking's gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS).
Beagle 2's destination on Mars is a region known as Isidis Planitia [see map]. This relatively flat basin may have been formed by sedimentary deposits and was chosen not just for the chances of finding life there but with a view to the safety of the lander as well.
especially something that'll actually propel the probe to mars. Something liquid, perhaps.
There may be things that reproduce and show signs of life on Mars, but we'll spend a lot of time trying to cram the stuff on Mars into the categories we have on Earth.
Hint: Chances are, no matter what we do, we're never gonna see a green spectral line or test for clorophyll.
Instead, we need to examine soil for the most basic types of life we know of... creatures or cells similar to viruses, bacteria, and amoeba.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
When an engineer claims to be fuelled by something other than caffeine, I'm immediately suspicious.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Oh, what's that? The probe sanitizer was on leave before packaging and launch? Ah, well, maybe it'll grow up to be like it's parents...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why do we assume that life on other worlds would have the same requirements as life on earth?
We were either created for this world or evolved into what we are by it. Doesn't it make sense that life on other worlds would be fit for theirs in the same way?
Why is water so damn important? Couldn't life be based upon a different liquid than water? A different solid than carbon?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
If life had existed in the presumable oceans on Mars back in the day, then it is possible that there is life in the water vapor in the atmosphere (just as there is life in our atmosphere). Of course, I'm not sure that there is much (any?) water in the atmosphere on Mars. Furthermore, Mars didn't overheat, and there is not as much water in the polar ice caps as we had expected. To me this indicated that most of the water must have gone down below the surface; it could have easily brought microbial life down with it, as Earth has much microbial life beneath the earth.
...were known to be flawed, before the rockets were ever launched. Many of the tests that would have been conclusive (such as those produced by Dr Carl Sagan) were abandoned, due to budget constraints, political concerns (finding life would have made it much harder for Congress to keep slashing NASA's budget) and the greater need to impress the mass media than the scientific community.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
-Laz
First off, the article is worth the read. They are going to do a pile of cool things, and with the PAW robotic arm, they'll be very adaptive based on what they discover. Tres' cool.
But I must object to the following:
Clearly, if the British lander does find life on Mars, a scientific symposium will have to be convened to sort out who may have discovered it first: NASA or ESA.
Must we? Could we for once view science as the continuous stretch of micro-advances that it really is? Whether it's flight, or the TV, or beer the credit for doing it "first" seems to overwelm the real credit that I will lavish on the Brits at the end of the mission, and that is: the credit for doing it well.
Honestly, NASA will probably never learn that - it's impossible to learn such a negative. For instance, it's impossible to 'learn' that there is no God - you cannot scientifically disprove God's existence.
On that same token, it's impossible for NASA to 'learn' that there is no life outside of Earth until it has visited all of the other planets throughout the Universe.
So, no, NASA will never learn that there is no life outside our planet - but in their quest, they will probably learn many other things (perhaps even useful ones).
Coffee! The ultimate rocket fuel!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Umm, I believe we have already proven that life exists in the void of space. IIRC, wasn't MIR 'infected' (yes, it was a bad case, from what I heard) with a type of mold that wasn't terrestrial to our planet?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Do we always have to scream "FIRST!"?
Only if it's followed by "POST!"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
WHY NOT?!!!!
Because it would shake our religious and moral philosphies to their very core! Because, everything we believe in would be proven wrong!! What's wrong with you? Lord, man, I'm shaking just thinking about it.
Oh, I thought you said wifes in bars.
never mind
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It's all part of NASA's work on alternative fuel sources - they believe that by running rocket engines on 'doubts' they can seriously cut down on the emissions caused by shuttle and satellite launches. The last major hurdle to overcome is how to make the navigation system certain that it has arrived in the correct place.
The organisation has a history of almost-but-not-quite developing revolutionary new fuel sources, last year NASA stopped developing their faster-than-light 'bad news' powered rockets as they were unwelcome everywhere they went.
Beep beep.
I read a book by Stuart Kauffman (hope I spelt that right). He said he was asked by NASA to help design probes to send to Mars to look for life. He told them not to bother, and his reasoning was:
All life takes in energy and matter from the environment, extracts energy, and produces waste. This process causes chemical imbalences in the atmosphere. Therefore to test for the presence of life, you only need to determine whether the atmosphere is in chemical equilibrium. Mars' atmosphere is, and has been for many millions of years.
Apparently this line of reasoning upset NASA, because they wanted to go to Mars, so they made their probes without his help, and when they arrived on Mars, found no traces of current life.
If they send more probes, they could very well find evidence of past life, but there is nothing going on there at the moment.
However I remember reading a story a while ago on Slashdot about how the atmosphere of Venus is operating far from chemical equilibrium, and that there may be some primitive life in the 400 degree acid in the atmosphere. Maybe someone should pay more attention to Venus...
- Water is highly polar, and therefore has the ability to dissolve ions. Without ions, complex chemistry could not take place.
- Water is liquid at a "reasonable" temperature, meaning water in liquid form is not hot enough to destroy most complex molecules.
- The density of ice is slightly less than that of water, so ice floats on top of water. This is vital, because it allows bodies of water to form a frozen cover which protects against further freezing. This is not common among substances.
- Water blocks ultraviolet light, which would otherwise destroy fragile molecules and organisms.
- Water has a very high specific heat, making it ideal for carrying out chemical reactions -- exothermic reactions can dump their heat into the water, and endothermic reactions can draw their heat from the water. This allows energetic reactions to occur without raising the temperature too high.
Basically, water is a very unusual substance with many favorable properties, and it's likely that life will take advantage of water, if it is present.That's not to say that life cannot exist without water, but it certainly makes life much more plausible.
As for non-carbon-based lifeforms, people have been pondering that for decades. Carbon is interesting because it can bond with itself pretty much ad infinitum, forming complicated structures. It also combines readily with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, the halogens, and a host of other elements. Complex life based on some non-carbon element would have to have the ability to form long chains of atoms, branching structures, and structured which curl up into specific shapes (i.e. proteins and enzymes). A carbon-silicon combo might work.
You do realize that they aren't talking about little green men right? They are talking about microscopic organisims, and to the best of our scientific knowledge there's alot of variation possible, but it's all largly the same. In fact if it's as "different" as you are suggesting it will probably be different enough that neither NASA's or the ESA's probes would ahve the equipment to detect it. They are depending on "life" there haveing the same building block as "life" here. :)
How about a BBC article
The fungi that did the damage, Novikova said, included members of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladesporium - all very common on Earth.
Davak