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Curiosity Spies Unidentified, Metallic Object On Mars
MrSeb writes "A few hundred million miles away on the surface of the Red Planet, Mars rover Curiosity has photographed an unidentified, shiny, metallic object. Now, before you get too excited, the most likely explanation is that bright object is part of the rover that has fallen off — or perhaps some debris from MSL Curiosity's landing on Mars, nine weeks ago. There is the distinct possibility, however, that this object is actually native to Mars, which would be far more exciting. It could be the tip of a larger object, or perhaps some kind of exotic, metallic Martian pebble (a piece of metal ore, perhaps). Close-up imagery will now be captured and analyzed, and within the next few days we should know if it's simply a piece of Curiosity — or something a whole lot more exciting."
The only reason we would go to Mars before we can live there is if we found life.
Or to seed life.
Just sayin...
Sooner or later, even if we find primitive life, we should start thinking about what can be done with the planet, even if it takes 1000 years to
get something to live there.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes, it's a (piece of a) spaceship named Curiosity. Seriously, the robot finds a metallic piece of something close to where it landed... what are the odds that part is not from Curiosity itself? (answer ~0%)
Well, its not actually very close to where it landed, at this point. And they've taken quite a few photos of the rover. What'll be interesting is if it IS a part from the rover, how did they not notice it was missing? And how did it come off? Seems more likely it'd be part of the lander, but IIRC, it didn't fly off in that direction.
I think your zero estimate is far off, if you're talking about Curiosity itself. If you're talking the whole Rube Goldberg contraption that landed it there... well, that may be a fairly low odds its not.