While we sent up a rover to check out the surface of Mars, it turns out we’re more likely to find life on the one of the MOONS of some of our other planets–for instance, on the moon of Saturn. What about the moons of Mars?
And is Mars alive or dead? (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this exciting show)
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If the Mars rover Curiosity finds carbon-based molecules in the Martian soil, researcher Gilbert Levin will feel vindicated, since he promulgated the theory that life on Earth was seeded by an asteroid from Mars 36 years ago.
A Titan/Centaur vehicle was sent to Mars on August 20, 1975 and picked up a soil sample there. Levin mixed the Martian soil with a nutrient containing radioactive carbon.
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The new Mars rover was named Curiosity because it hopes to answer one of the greatest questions of modern man: Are we really Martians?
A few billion years ago, Mars may have been a planet covered with oceans. We’re not sure what happened (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show), but we do know that the liquid has mostly burned away. Curiosity will probe the soil that they left behind in order to look for tiny fossils.
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The Curiosity lander has successfully reached the surface of Mars and appears to be intact. Images began appearing at 10:40 PM PDT. Curiosity is the most complex automated space mission every attempted by mankind.
The craft’s descent-stage retrorockets fired as it descended, slowing its approach to the surface. In the most difficult part of the landing, nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the "sky crane" maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown, the connecting cords were severed, and the descent stage flew out of the way. The landing took place at about three o’clock in the afternoon Mars time at the landing site, and 10:31 PM PDT at JPL mission control.
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