MARS PICTURES
NEWS STORY
NASA
I'm a die-hard romanticist when it comes to the idea of life in outer space, but I would think it's difficult for anyone to deny feeling we're really close to finding the definitive proof that life exists or existed once on Mars. The recent pictures by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite show a seemingly deserted planet, but not a wholly dead planet. As Miracle Max* says "There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead"! Taken by "carrying the most powerful telescopic camera ever flown to another planet, the satellite was launched in August 2005. Older observer satellites flown on previous missions to space were able to identify space objects no smaller than a London bus. But the state-of-the-art camera on-board Orbiter can spot something the size of a dinner table."
To me it's like looking at any satallite pictures of the Earth taken of the lifeless regions of the Sahara desert or Siberia. It's not hard to imagine that beneath the soils on these landscapes we will discover some revealing facts about the past or future inhabitants of the Red Planet and it will be exciting to see if these life-forms are remnants or indeed what scientists have been describing as perhaps the beginning of life.
I don't think there's a better time than now to be exploring Mars, to learn about ourselves in relation to the universe but also to our own planet, who many believe is the the throes of catastrophe.
* The Princess Bride, 1987
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