Mars Rover Investigates Possibility of Ancient Microbial Life

Riding with Robots writes "The robotic geologist Spirit, now scurrying to reach a safe haven before the harsh Martian winter sets in, has found signs that explorers say point to hot springs or fumaroles in the Red Planet's distant past. That possibility is not only interesting geologically, but potentially biologically, since those kinds of environments on Earth teem with microbial life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Opportunity continues its descent into a deep crater, where it has found other clues about the ancient waters of Mars."

Comments

Other Title

[Kamokazi]

I liked this title better: "Mars Rover Investigates Steamy Martian Past" But on a serious note, those rovers continually prove they were one of the best investments NASA ever made.

Re:Other Title

[Anonymous Coward]

To make it a true slashdot article... keep science & reason out of it too.

Re:Other Title

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't merely as insurance against a failure. It was also insurance against landing someplace utterly boring with one of them. Their landing method wasn't capable of getting into the places they knew were interesting, so they picked spots where they had a good chance of landing within driving distance of something that looked interesting from orbital images.

They originally thought they struck out with Spirit. Sure they had a few rocks to grind on, but they were all ejecta from the lava plains. Basalt isn't very interesting if you're looking for evidence of past water.

However, as the mission wore on, they realized they would probably have time to drive to Columbia Hills, which they in fact accomplished, and that turned out to be a trove of information. These possible fumeroles are on the far side of Columbia Hills from where they landed.

Opportunity was just lucky from the beginning. Sucker landed right inside a crater. The Spirit team was more than a little jealous.

Offtopic, but funny journalism.

[Technician]

From the article;

"Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity have remained on Mars for much longer than originally planned. "

I never knew they were ever planning on leaving Mars. ;-) I think the reporter should have said the rovers have functioned longer on Mars than originally planned.

Re:Offtopic, but funny journalism.

[shawnce]

The only way NASA could get the rovers to go in the first was by telling them that they would return home safely at the end of the mission. Of course that was a lie but sometimes you just have to lie to get things done (just don't let the rovers know this).

Ah, robots!

[Tatarize]

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned we should put those little robots any place we can. We should have a dozen on the moon and let people pay to control them. At the very least they'd make a great welcome party for the Chinese.

Microbial life on Mars

[NJ Hewitt]

It's very likely there is life on Mars, but not necessarily native Martian life. Given that we've found lots of Martian meteorites on Earth, a lot of Earth rocks must have made it to Mars - and living organisms pervade the upper crust of our planet.

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[MtViewGuy]

I still think Mars may still have microbial life--but you have to dig under the surface at least about 1,000 mm to find them. They're living off water trapped in the deeper Martian soil. We'll find out more when the Mars Science Laboratory rover arrives in 2010.

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[Ihlosi]

It's very likely there is life on Mars, but not necessarily native Martian life. Given that we've found lots of Martian meteorites on Earth, a lot of Earth rocks must have made it to Mars - and living organisms pervade the upper crust of our planet.

Given that Mars was hospitable to life earlier than Earth was, life on Earth might even have started on Mars.

Also, it's probably easier for meteorites to travel inward than outward in the solar system (due to the sun's gravity well). We've found lots of Martian meteorites on Earth, by how many Venusian meteorites ?

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

For future reference 1m makes for a handy alternative to 1000mm

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[djupedal]

It really depends on the ratio of strikes big enough to propel chunks that can escape either planet's gravity. That, and the fact that loose fragments are more likely to tumble inwards towards the sun as well, put the odds in favor of our being more hit prone, IMHO.

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[AikonMGB]

From long ago, perhaps, but there is an important difference in the past several (hundred? thousand?) millenia; Earth has a much thicker (pressure-wise) and thicker (altitude-wise) atmosphere than Mars does. A meteor(ite) that enters Earth's atmosphere is far more likely to burn up before impacting than one of the same size entering Mars' atmosphere. Furthermore, because Earth is so much bigger, we have a deeper gravity well, meaning you need a greater impact energy to get ejecta to reach escape velocity.

Aikon-

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[briancnorton]

Probably not. You've got a few gravitational encumbrances going the other way.The first is the earth's larger mass. Escape Velocity from Mars (5km/s) is MUCH lower than from the earth (11.2 km/s) requiring a larger "strike," creating more heat and launching deeper, sterile subsurface projectiles. Then you're fighting the sun's gravity instead of going with it. This means that you can't have debris slowly drift in space inward toward the sun until it intersects the path of the earth, it has to SHOOT straight from the earth to Mars, which is much less probable.

Re:Microbial life on Mars

[Ihlosi]

I don't know about Venusian meteorites, but the vast majority of stuff that heads inward [...]

Which gives it a good opportunity to hit any planet that's farther inward.

slingshots around the sun and back out, so I don't buy your theory.

It doesn't matter in which direction it goes first. To hit something that's farther outward, it needs to be launched with enough velocity to a) escape the first planets gravity well (good point made by some other posters here) and b) move away from the sun far enough to actually cross the orbit of one of the outward planets.

Even if something "slighshots" around the sun, it won't go farther out than its point of origin plus some distance it gets from its initial velocity. It's not a real "slingshot" maneuver, just an orbit. In order to pick up velocity (with a real slinghshot maneuver, like the ones performed by space probes), it would have to approach a planet at juuuuuust the right angle ... a fairly rare event.

Only a year, year and a half stale news

[Iowan41]

This was found rather a while ago.

Not Holding My Breath

[CheshireCatCO]

Not that I relish being negative, but I don't recommend getting too excited. I've seen way, way too many of these kinds press-releases -- especially about Mars and especially-especially about evidence of life there -- to get excited yet. Even if they find any evidence of life, it will almost certainly quickly be disputed by other groups and then counter-disputed by the original group and the whole thing will turn into a non-score tie. It also seems like the Martian astrobiology folks have a rather lower threshold for "exciting evidence" of life than many of the rest of us. (Maybe that's a selection effect and maybe that's just common to all scientists, each in his or her own field.)