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Tag Archives: Mars
Inspiration Mars: Suicide gets good PR
It is very difficult not to be cynical about the “Inspiration Mars” project outlined by space pioneer and multimillionaire Dennis Tito. The basic idea is to launch a spacecraft in 2018 with two people in it that will circle around Mars and come back. Easy to describe in one sentence, but… As just about every [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged Falcon, Inspiration, risk, space travel, suicide, Tito Comments closed
Earth bacteria can survive in a least some Mars conditions
To quote from a movie (Jurassic Park), “Life finds a way.” So far, there is no sign of life on Mars. Water, yes, but not life. At least at or near the surface, Mars is a very inhospitable place for life. It is dry, so dry the Sahara is a sauna by comparison. It is [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged bacteria, Carnobacteria, exogenous life, extremophile, life on Mars, survival mechanisms Comments closed
Curiosity has just begun
About a quarter million people were watching NASA TV as the Mars rover Curiosity was put down on the surface of Mars. Not bad for 1:30AM on the east coast of the U.S. The room at JPL mission headquarters exploded with shouts, cheers and cries of joy. Of course, these men and a few women [...]
Off to Mars. Yes and no.
It hasn’t escaped notice that the Russians (with a Chinese probe) tried sending a mission to Mars, Fobos-Grunt-Yinghuo, which spluttered into low Earth orbit and presumably will fall back to Earth. Meanwhile, NASA the U.S. space agency lofted another Mars mission, MSL Curiosity, that is happily on its way to the Red Planet. If this [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged ESA, Fobos, Grunt, Mars Curse, Mars mission, NASA, rover Leave a comment
New evidence for liquid water on Mars
The possible seasonal rills of running water on Mars……Credit: NASA, JPL Earth has lots of liquid water, like oceans of it – though salty. Why would people be excited by briny water on Mars? However, for those intrepid, dreaming human beings who think of traveling to Mars and one day pitching camp there, the news [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged brine, carbon dioxide, CRISM, exogenous life, liquid water, Mars colonies, MRO, NASA, spectrograph Leave a comment
Mars water: What’s all the fuss?
Seventh in a series of posts inspired by ten topics in ‘Insights of the Decade’ from the December 17, 2010 special issue of Science Magazine The topics are: Inflammation, climatology, tricks of light, alien planets, the microbiome, cell reprogramming, Martian water, the DNA time machine, cosmology and epigenetics. The original articles are now behind a [...]
Posted in Impact: Exogenous Life Also tagged astrobiology, exogenous life, life, origin of life, planet, rovers, solar system, water, water-ice Leave a comment
Biogeology: A deep subject
Way down deep, below the lowest depths of the oceans, below the floor of the seas – in the rock of the ocean crust – there exists a world with life. It’s been known for some time that bacteria can live in rock. According to the research done by Martin Fisk and colleagues at the [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Atlantis Massif, bacteria, biogeochemistry, biogeology, Enceladus, Europa, Io, rock life, Titan 1 Comment
Mars rover Spirit: Trapped but contributing to water story
Disturbed soil surrounding the Mars rover Spirit…….Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell A heading for this story could be: Dead Spirit reports from a moist grave. Almost technically correct but too much wordplay. The reality is more prosaic and potentially more important. The issue is water on Mars. Evidence is overwhelming that Mars had, as in two billion years [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged exogenous life, geology, MER, rover, space exploration, Spirit, subsurface, water Leave a comment
Life on Mars, if it exists, is below the surface
Is there life on Mars? We don’t know yet. If there is, it isn’t very big. In fact, if there’s (still) any life at all, it will be bacteria or something even more primitive and small. Whatever there is, it’s also not likely to be on the surface. That’s not because of the cold; it’s [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged astrobiology, bacteria, DNA, environment, extremophiles, LUCA, microbes, panspermia, UV 1 Comment
Enceladus has (at least) a sea, possibly life
It’s all but official. New data released from the Cassini spacecraft has confirmed that Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, has liquid water – as a sea – underneath its exterior layer of ice. The idea of Enceladus having large bodies of liquid water is not new but thanks to Cassini, the evidence is [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged ammonia, Cassini, Enceladus, Europa, Moon, rocky core, Saturn, tiger stripes, Titan, water jets Leave a comment
Martian lakes may have lingered – life more likely
Over the past decade (roughly) as more visual and on-site evidence has been gathered, it’s become accepted that Mars had a ‘water era,’ a time when liquid water was relatively common on the surface of the planet. Liquid water is now long-gone from the surface and what didn’t escape into the atmosphere is now trapped [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged astrobiology, astrogeology, exobiology, exogenous life, Mars lakes, Mars water Leave a comment
Fossil evidence in Mars meteorite revisited, or, IT was LIFE!!!
When the 13,000 year-old Alan Hills (ALH84001) meteorite was first analyzed back in 1996 it caused a sensation. LIFE had existed on Mars!!! The media played the story, of course. Unfortunately, the evidence for fossilized organisms in the meteorite was inconclusive, that is, it could be interpreted in different ways. Most scientists decided that what [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged ALH84001, bacteria, exogenous life, fossils, life on Mars, NASA 1 Comment
On the Moon or elsewhere: Follow the water
In the detective business, the standard advice is: “Follow the money.” In human space exploration, perhaps somewhat similar advice applies: “Follow the water.” This needs debate, however there are some potent arguments in favor of the notion that human (as differentiated from robotic or probe) exploration of space should go where sources of water are [...]
Posted in Impact: Space Exploration Also tagged Enceladus, Europa, hydrogen, Moon, moon water, NEOs, oxygen, rocket fuel, space travel, water, water-ice Leave a comment
“Gray Mars” and the stuff of life