The Space Stuff thread

Caledon Ken said:

Interesting graphics as you scroll through story

Was there life on Mars?

Interesting article.

I remember a previous Mars mission where they thought they had found life but the equipment they had was too primitive to verify it.

One of the challenging parts of preparing a spacecraft to send to Mars is to sterilize it. You you want to prevent any earth life from contaminating Mars. It would be unfortunate if a rover were to discover life only to find it was only finding life it had brought with it.

Sterilizing unmanned spacecraft is easy compared to when manned spacecraft land on Mars. Once that happens life from Earth is bound to contaminate Mars. Earth life probably won't survive on the surface of Mars. However, contamination will be a problem when they explore underground caves where they may find pockets of water where life may be possible.

elbmek said:

I recall that, the potentially fossilised bacteria. It was published and then suddenly vanished from the media and source (NASA). Someone got scared, probably a religious snowflake, and it was removed and hushed up. There are things that we, the population of this planet, are not meant to know.

More's the pity...

Thx John! I'm glad I checked my email. but I gotta go, came in at 6:30 and I did see the booster landing.