On August 5, Curiosity, the rover, landed on the surface of Mars. About the size of a small car, the six-wheeled adventurer is there to investigate the possibility and, perhaps, history of life on Mars. Other than its own equipment, Curiosity has captured evidence of water erosion so far. Equipped with a six-foot arm, the rover can search dirt with a sieve and a camera. Curiosity can also scan its area and surroundings with other cameras. The rover will work on Mars for the next two years.
The tracks left by the rover on the dirt of Mars is said to be reminiscent of Neil Armstrong’s footprints on the moon. This is our generation’s equivalent to such a moment. With better technology comes a safer journey to a more distant and dangerous place. The moon-landing is remembered as families gathered around a black and white television set in awe of what they were seeing. This mission will most likely be remembered as a young astronomy enthusiast checking the rover’s Twitter history on their phone. Yes, Curiosity has a twitter account, as most entertaining, interesting, or important things and people do. Almost all of Curiosity’s tweets are accompanied by a photo.
Just as the moon landing was imperfect, Curiosity will most likely make some mistakes along the way. You are probably wondering how the moon landing was imperfect. Originally, Buzz Aldrin was to be the first man on the moon. He was going to say, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Instead, Neil Armstrong went ahead, and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” a somewhat contradictory phrase.
The idea of life on Mars isn’t as crazy as you may think. We must first understand how Earth received life. Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, partly responsible for creating the Plutoids, explained it best while answering the question “What is the most astounding fact?” Tyson answered thusly:
“The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth, the atoms that make the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core, under extreme temperatures and pressure. These stars, when unstable in their later years, collapsed and exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense and collapse, forming the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets. And these planets now have the ingredients for life.”
So Mars could have life. One of the only impediments for life on Mars is the tough, barren terrain, which would make the evolution of an organism, single or multi-celled, quite difficult. Even humans on Earth hardly made it to where they are now. At one point in prehistoric times, there were only about 30,000 humans roaming the Earth.
So, pay heavy attention to Curiosity. It could make a discovery that dwarfs all that were made in the past century.