Will Curiosity Look for Life on Mars? Not Exactly…
“Curiosity is not a life detection mission. We’re not actually looking for life and we don’t have the ability to detect life if it was there. What we are looking for is the ingredients of life.”
– John Grotzinger, MSL Project Scientist
And with these words this latest video from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory begins, explaining what Curiosity’s goal will be once it arrives on Mars on August 5. There will be a lot of media coverage of the event and many news stories as the date approaches, and some of these will undoubtedly refer to Mars Science Laboratory as a “search for life on Mars” mission… but in reality the focus of MSL is a bit subtler than that (if no less exciting.)
But hey, one can always dream…
Video: NASA/JPL
Recent Posts
Colliding Moons Might Have Created Saturn’s Rings
If we could wind the clock back billions of years, we'd see our Solar System…
Is it Life, or is it Volcanoes?
Astronomers are working hard to understand biosignatures and how they indicate life's presence on an…
If Earth is Average, We Should Find Extraterrestrial Life Within 60 Light-Years
A new study estimates that there could be 11,000 habitable planets within 100 parsecs of…
NASA Opens the Lid on OSIRIS-REx's Sample Capsule
NASA teams have started the intricate process of removing the samples of asteroid Bennu from…
How Do Lava Worlds Become Earth-Like, Living Planets?
Earth was once entirely molten. Planetary scientists call this phase in a planet's evolution a…
Day Has Returned, but India’s Lander and Rover have Failed to Wake Up
It looks like India's Chandrayaan-3 succumbed to the cold, and its mission is over. The…