This summer, NASA plans to release the most advanced Mars rover ever, a 1,025.12kg behemoth that, if all goes well, will eventually send samples from the Red Planet to Earth.
The main hope is that the rover will gather new evidence of life, living or extinct, from our planetary neighbor. But Space.com attended a recent conference on potential astrobiology on Mars and found that almost everyone in the audience thinks that if there is life, it's probably deep underground.
At the Mars Extant Life conference, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Vlada Stamenkovich supported the idea that if Martian life exists, it is likely below the surface.
“The surface of Mars is a very oxidizing, radiation-heavy environment in which liquid water is not very stable for a long time,” Stamenkovich said. “This is the worst place to find places to live on Mars.”
Some scientists advocate the creation of nimble robots that could explore the systems of Martian caves, but this is an extremely difficult technical project.
More important, Stamenkovic said, would be if the agency dispatched equipment capable of recognizing groundwater and chemicals associated with possible life.
Or perhaps, to unravel the mysteries of underground Mars, we will have to wait until NASA implements long-awaited plans to send humans to the Red Planet, a mission currently scheduled for the mid-2030s.
Sources: Photo: NASA
