Search for Water-Ice by the Phoenix Mars Lander-Part III
“In everything we know about life on Earth, there is no known example without liquid water,” said Cornell University’s Steve Squyres, principal science investigator for the Mars rover mission, in a telephone interview. “That’s the reason the search for water was so important at Mars.”
The only 100% theory about Mars that carries any weight anymore is that at one time it was wet, and now it is dry. Period. The world would be much more exciting if the early astronomers had been right on target regarding the canals and markings on the red planet as vegetation of some form, with a few green little-aliens running around behind them. And it was very exciting for a short time when Orson Welles broadcasted in 1938 “The War of the Worlds”. But fact has overcame fiction . . .
Anyway, the water NASA is searching for may bring forth life forms totally reliant on the water we are so desperately seeking on Mars. And with proof the planet actually did support an environment containing water, has moved us to the second level of “is there life on Mars” now that we have found the water? Does water prove there was life? The NASA Mars rover Opportunity has found actual signs of past water on mars at its Meridiani Planum landing site, in a hostile environment that some researchers feel could prove a previous existence of life. This does not prove life was there but it sure is a good place to start.
Several researchers for the subject of water on Mars have wondered how life on Mars, if it was there, could ever have survived or lived on the planet. The coldness of the planet and the thin air may have put severe restraints on any type of life forms, or the development of microorganisms. Questions about how the water was situated, such as tiny little puddles, or a huge area over miles of land. Could it always have been ice covered, oozing through the ground to form small bits of moisture. Most of these questions have been answered through the recent geological images left by Opportunity’s science package—which proved the existence of liquid water on the ripples left on the Martian stones.
Some of the mineral deposits left behind due to the evaporation of Martian water, were hematite and jarosite. This indicates that at one time it was a wet, acidic and salty waterscape at that location. The availability of jarosite refers to a very acidic foundation, in amounts similar to the tomato juice acid. A similar location would be in the Rio Tinto basin in Spain, where life is teeming but where it evolved into the inhabitation of the area, not developing originally into it.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2007 at 3:50 am and is filed under Mission History, Mission Objectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
