Next month (August 6th), NASA’s new space rover “Curiosity” is expected to launch to Mars. It will be hunting for the organic particles that constitute life, which shouldn’t be too much of a challenge considering if these molecules were present they would be directly in the soil. If present, one would find them simply by “digging a shovel into the ground and scooping.” Finding these could provide substantial evidence of ancient life on Mars.
If Curiosity finds even more complex molecules, that only provides more evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet. They could resemble known building blocks of the amino acids present in our bodies and other life forms on Earth. These are trickier to find, considering they are much more fragile. However, the Mars Science Laboratory remains optimistic. Ongoing research continues to determine how deep in the soil radiation penetrates, so the rover may dig past that to discover these complex carbon chains.
Pavlov, the chief researcher of where and how radiation penetrates, states: “Right now the challenge is that past Martian landers haven’t seen any organic material whatsoever. We know that organic materials have to be there, but we can’t find any of them in the soil.”
Past martian rovers have only collected samples from the top of the surface of the planet. Curiosity will be digging 5 inches underneath.
Always on the hunt for life.
P.S. You can watch a real-time visualization of Curiosity’s journey through space on NASA’s website.
Space Vagabond 