The Best Place to Find Evidence For Life on Mars

Finding evidence of life on Mars can best be done through studying rock layers that were once saturated with liquid water. NASA rover Curiosity is currently exploring the Jezero crater region where abundant moisture may have existed in the past.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk plans to send two uncrewed cargo ships to Mars by 2022, followed by crewed flights in 2024.

Mars Orbiter

MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) orbits Mars every afternoon, gathering observations about its surface in detail and providing communications relay support for rovers and landers. Equipped with one of the sharpest lenses ever sent to the planet, MRO can reveal rocks containing evidence of water which have helped sculpt Mars’ landscapes.

Gravity field investigation package maps the atmosphere over canyons and around giant volcanoes, while accelerometers measure spacecraft velocities during aerobraking to provide scientists with data on changes in Martian atmospheric density throughout each season. Polar ice caps may even reveal frozen remnants from once-mighty lakes! And this year it has begun looking for potential sites suitable for future human landings.

Mars Express

The Mars Express spacecraft has revolutionized our understanding of Mars. Its instruments have provided researchers with many surprising discoveries, such as an indication that subsurface water may exist on Mars. Furthermore, it explains the annual cycle of atmospheric water vapour as well as dust formation in lower atmospheric regions.

The spacecraft is equipped with sensors to study Mars’ ionosphere, surface and interior environments as well as act as a relay for NASA rovers on its surface.

Mars Express is operated from ESA’s spacecraft control centre in Darmstadt, Germany and was first launched into space on June 3, 2003 and arrived at Mars’ surface two months later with Beagle 2. Both systems continue their orbit around Mars but Beagle 2 lost contact with Earth sometime during 2004.

Mariner 9

Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to map Mars. Its photographs revealed signs that suggest life on its surface and provided evidence for NASA’s long-held theory that Mars once experienced geological activity.

Mariner 9 arrived on Mars in November 1971 during a massive dust storm. Once this cleared up, Mariner 9 started taking pictures of its deeply pitted surface revealing it as seen through its lenses.

The spacecraft also captured images of huge volcanoes such as Olympus Mons and an immense canyon known as Valles Marineris that may provide evidence for plate tectonics on Mars. Additionally, its mission lasted an extra year beyond its 90-day nominal duration before running out of attitude control gas on October 27, 1972 and plunging into its atmosphere.

Phoenix

The Phoenix is an iconic symbol of renewal and hope. Often depicted as an immortal bird resurrecting from its own funeral pyre, the Phoenix can often be found appearing as logos and mascots, fairy tales and novels as a representation of idealism or hope.

Sierra Foothills ARC was pleased to welcome Devon and Trevor Bautista from Phoenix Cubesat fame to discuss their work. They provided insight into its design and development processes, along with any obstacles or successes they’d come across along the way.

The Phoenix team has taken steps to conserve power by switching off survival heaters on their lander in order to operate cameras and meteorological instruments until the end of their mission. This should enable them to keep operating the main camera as well as meteorological instruments until its conclusion.

Curiosity

Curiosity, NASA’s fourth robotic rover to land on Mars, uses a drill and other scientific instruments to collect powdered rock samples from Gale Crater on the Red Planet in search of signs that its environment once supported life.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Pasadena, California manages this mission. Prior rovers Sojourner and Opportunity were sent to Mars between 1997 and 2004, landing successfully.

Curiosity can be defined in several ways, with one such definition emphasizing information seeking behavior across species from apes to crabs. Information seeking is key element of learning, yet can involve complex tradeoffs within our brain’s representations of our knowledge (known as knowledge networks). They have long been studied in cognitive psychology and neuroscience research studies.