Joe Palka
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Today, Mars is a dry, inhospitable place not likely to harbor living organisms.
But three billion years ago, researchers say the planet was wetter and warmer, a place some kind of microbial life could have existed.
They hope to find evidence for that hypothesis in rocks on Mars that have been on the planet since those warmer, wetter days.
The new results, published in the journal Nature Communications, come from a rock sample the rover collected in 2020.
The sample was analyzed using the rover's onboard chem lab.
It then took scientists on Earth years to analyze and understand the analysis.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2013 with the goal of making just this kind of finding.
Today, Mars is a dry, inhospitable place not likely to harbor living organisms.
But 3 billion years ago, researchers say the planet was wetter and warmer, a place some kind of microbial life could have existed.
They hope to find evidence for that hypothesis in rocks on Mars that have been on the planet since those warmer, wetter days.
The new results, published in the journal Nature Communications, come from a rock sample the rover collected in 2020.
The sample was analyzed using the rover's onboard chem lab.
It then took scientists on Earth years to analyze and understand the analysis.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2013 with the goal of making just this kind of finding.
The spacecraft is called SPARKS, an acronym for Star Planet Activity Research CubeSat.
CubeSats are a class of tiny, inexpensive probes that can still do significant scientific research—
SPARKS has an ultraviolet telescope that will be used to study solar flares coming from stars that might have planetary systems.