life on mars
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Simulated Mission In Chilean Desert Shows How A Rover Could Detect Life On Mars
By using the barren Atacama Desert in Chile as a stand-in for Mars, researchers have shown that it’s possible to use an autonomous rover-mounted drill to detect life beneath a desolate surface. Encouragingly, the test resulted in the discovery of a resilient microorganism—exactly the kind of creature that could lurk deep beneath the Martian surface.
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Two New Papers Offers Clues To Mars’ Weird History
As far as humans are concerned, Mars has two stories. One is in the present: We’re trying to send our ships and our astronauts to the Red Planet in order to understand what it’s like today. But much of that work is meant to tell a second story – what the planet used to be…
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Curiosity Has Discovered Something That Raises More Questions About Life On Mars
Everyone from David Bowie to astrobiologists to tinfoil hat believers has pondered the question: Is there life on Mars? While we’ve found direct evidence of liquid water on the Red Planet, we have yet to find any microbes there. But not all hope is lost — new discoveries from NASA’s Curiosity rover have brought forth…
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We’re Being Overprotective Of Mars
Mars is a big boy. At 4.5 billion years old, the Red Planet can surely take care of itself by now — but you wouldn’t know it based on the great lengths NASA and friends go to protect it from contamination by Earthly debris. Some astrobiologists think these measures are unnecessary.