Joe Palka
speaker
237 appearances
31 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 29 Aug
Joe Palka’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 31 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 7.
Appearances
As the name suggests, the goal is to make measurements of planets that might, possibly, harbor some form of life.
To do that, aerospace engineers will need to develop some new technologies.
For example, sunshields that can block the light from the stars around which the distant planets rotate
and cameras that can be pointed precisely for long periods of time so they can capture the faint light from these distant objects.
Scientists will also have to decide what types of signals will convince them that a planet orbiting another star might actually harbor life.
Assuming all the technical hurdles can be overcome, launch of the habitable world's observatory is likely more than a decade away.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
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.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
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.
Showing 61–80 of 237 · page 4 of 12
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