Today, NASA announced that the latest and greatest rover, Curiosity, has found evidence that three billion years ago Mars could have supported life.
John Grotzinger, the mission chief scientist, said, "The key thing here is an environment that a microbe could have lived in, maybe even prospered."
The Curiosity's drill bored down into the bedrock of what is believed to be a three billion-year-old lake bed, where it discovered fresh-water clay, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. These are the ingredients for a pretty comfy life...if you happen to be an Earth-like microbe.
Grotzinger went on to say, "We found a habitable environment that's largely benign. You could have drank the water that flowed."
Apparently, the next mission will be more advanced and capable of searching for evidence that microbes might have been right there in that tasty drinking water. I hope Elon Musk and his friends at Space-X remember to bring cups when their 80,000 person Mars colony is established :-)
I found more details about this exciting NASA discovery in USA Today's article here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/12/life-on-mars/1982339/
John Grotzinger, the mission chief scientist, said, "The key thing here is an environment that a microbe could have lived in, maybe even prospered."
The Curiosity's drill bored down into the bedrock of what is believed to be a three billion-year-old lake bed, where it discovered fresh-water clay, nitrogen, sulfur, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. These are the ingredients for a pretty comfy life...if you happen to be an Earth-like microbe.
Grotzinger went on to say, "We found a habitable environment that's largely benign. You could have drank the water that flowed."
Apparently, the next mission will be more advanced and capable of searching for evidence that microbes might have been right there in that tasty drinking water. I hope Elon Musk and his friends at Space-X remember to bring cups when their 80,000 person Mars colony is established :-)
I found more details about this exciting NASA discovery in USA Today's article here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/12/life-on-mars/1982339/
I probably should have clarified that the clay was formed from fresh water, not that there is water in the lake bed at this moment :-)
ReplyDeleteI heard about this. Kind of cool. Sounds like a great story line, too. :)
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, Rebecca, all the recent tech news has awakened the wide-eyed seven-year-old in me again. For the longest time, it seemed as though our world was stuck in "Here's a computer, now go away." But virtual reality, jetpacks and now a mass effort toward space seem to all be converging at once. Lot's of great storylines are brewing.
DeleteThanks so much for taking the time to pop by :-)
i'm with you on this tim, i also love reading and watching news about the rover...thinking about it up there, on another planet, sending back pics data, it is fantastic
ReplyDeleteThanks for popping by, Andy. You are always welcome. We are definitely living through an amazing time in history. I believe we will see the first colonies of people living in space. The drums of exploration are beating loudly at the moment. :-)
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