Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe: ASTRONAUTS IN MARS - Send Astronauts to Mars to Find Evidence of Life, NASA's Top Scientist Says

Sunday, May 22, 2016

ASTRONAUTS IN MARS - Send Astronauts to Mars to Find Evidence of Life, NASA's Top Scientist Says

Send Astronauts to Mars to Find Evidence of Life, NASA's Top Scientist Says:

This detailed view of Mars was created using 1,000 photos taken by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter.

Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS

The chances are good that microbial life existed on Mars long ago, and sending astronauts to the Red Planet is the best way to find the evidence, NASA's chief scientist said.

Do you think life exists on Mars today?

Yes - The Red Planet is teeming with tiny microbes, we just haven't found them yet.
Yes - An advanced civilization lives below the surface, where we can't detect them.
No - Life never existed on Mars.
No - Mars once had life, but those organisms are long dead.
Get Results Share This

Though Mars is cold and dry today, the planet hosted liquid water on its surface for extended periods more than 3 billion years ago, Ellen Stofan pointed out during a talk Tuesday (May 17) at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C.

"Those conditions on Mars, we know, were not that different from the conditions on Earth from when life evolved," she said. "And life evolved so quickly here on Earth, and in the oceans, that it gives the scientific community a fair amount of confidence that the same conditions did exist on Mars, and that life did evolve there. So how are we going to find it?" [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

Scientists know that life had evolved on Earth by 3.8 billion years ago, and a recent study suggested that the first microbes actually might have appeared by 4.1 billion years ago — just 440 million years after the planet formed.

Earth life-forms stayed simple for a long time after that; complex, multicellular organisms didn't get a firm foothold here until 800 million years ago or so. By that time, the Red Planet had long since lost most of its atmosphere, as well as its stable surface water. So the hunt for life on Mars should think small, Stofan said.

"We're not looking for skeletons; we're looking for fossil microbes — if [Mars] life did indeed go extinct," she said. "And those are going to be hard to find."

Indeed, field geologists here on Earth can study rocks rich in fossil microbes but never see the tiny structures, said Stofan, who is a geologist. Therefore, she thinks robots won't be able to do the job by themselves on Mars, especially considering how high the burden of proof will be for such an epochal discovery.

"I strongly believe we will never settle this question of determining whether or not there's life on Mars unless we get human scientists down onto the surface of the Red Planet," Stofan said.

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

The original 'Face on Mars' image taken by NASA's Viking 1 orbiter, in grey scale, on July, 25 1976. Image shows a remnant massif located in the Cydonia region.

0 of 10 questions complete

Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

0 of questions complete

The search for Mars life is, therefore, a strong motivation for putting boots on the Red Planet, which NASA aims to do by 2040. But there are other drivers as well, Stofan said.

"Every time I go out into a classroom — whether it was a D.C. high school I went to last week, elementary schools around the world — you ask those kids, 'Do you want to go to Mars?' And over half the room raises their hand," she said. "So let's get this done. Let's go to Mars."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment

NASA Photos Photography

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).