Write your abstract here. Is There
Life on Mars ? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out.
Next year NASA''s Phoenix Mars Lander will dig down into the
surface of
the arctic northern plains of the red planet, as recently announced by
US scientists. Phoenix will blast off in August, beginning a journey that will take
several million miles and nine months to complete until the probe lands
on Mars. Once there, Phoenix will deploy a set of advanced research
tools never before used on the planet. After the terrestrial discovery that exotic
microbes exist in the
rocks hundreds of meters beneath the floor of the Pacific Ocean,
scientists have become more opened-minded about where and when life
began. Strange subterranean life on Earth is able to thrive without
sunlight, exploiting dissolved gases and fluids, which percolate up
from the depths of the Earth’s mantle. The primary producers are
microbes that can convert inorganic substances directly into living
material using chemical energy alone. Jules Verne''s science-fiction classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth
aside, geologists have suggested the combined biomass of of
microrganisms beneath Earth''s surface may be several times that of all
organisms, complex and simple, living on the surface above.
Extremophiles have been found thriving in South African mines at depths
of 3.5 kilometers; like their deep-sea vent counterparts, SLime
communities (for subsurface lithoautotropic microbial ecosystem) can
live independent of solar energy -surface and light. Deep rock microbe
communities have been found trapped within their host rock for millions
of years. The significance of these discoveries for Mars is that, though the
surface is hostile to life, the warmer subsurface may be more
congenial. And even if Mars is dead today, life could have clung on
underground for eons before planetary conditions worsened. The new probe is a departure from past missions, which used robotic
vehicles to explore the planet''s surface hills and craters. Phoenix
will actually dig down into Martian
soil to
assess if conditions are
favorable to past or present life. Specifically, US scientists will use
Phoenix to try and determine whether frozen
water near the planet''s
surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a viable environment
for microbes. "Phoenix will complement our strategic exploration of Mars by being
our first attempt to actually touch and analyze Martian water—water in
the form of buried ice," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars
Exploration Program. The solar- powered craft is equipped with a 2.3 meter (7.5 foot)
robotic arm that will go vertically into the soil, aiming to strike the
icy crust that is believed to lie within a few inches of the surface. Peter Smith, Phoenix''s principal investigator at the University of
Arizona, Tucson, said the craft would be able to study the history of
the ice and analyze how liquid water has modified the chemistry of the
soil. "In addition, our instruments can assess whether this polar environment is a habitable zone for primitive microbes," Smith said. The Phoenix''s robotic arm is capable of lifting samples to two
instruments on its deck. One instrument will use a heater to check for
water and carbon-based chemicals, while the other will analyze the soil
chemistry. The probe also hosts an onboard meteorology station, which will
assess water and dust levels in the atmosphere, while tracking Martian
weather during the three-month mission. Galaxy News Reported July 11th, 2007.
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