On the 26th November, NASA launched its most ambitious space probe to Mars. Christened ‘Curiosity’ it is hoped it will tell us ‘Is There Life On Mars?’

Curiosity is a large six-wheeled vehicle about the size of a jeep and weighing 1 ton. It is due to arrive at Mars in August 2012. It will parachute into the Martian atmosphere to help slow it down and as it nears the surface a platform ‘sky crane’ will use thrusters similar to the Thunderbirds to hover above the ground and gently lower the rover down to the surface. This is a very risky procedure that has never been tried before. Other landers have used inflatable air bags to bounce onto the surface.

Once on the surface, the nuclear powered £1.6bn rover will spend up to two years travelling more than 12 miles sampling rocks and soil. Curiosity's 2.1 metre arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the Martian rock and its mast carries high-definition and laser cameras. It is equipped with a weather station that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer app with daily weather updates is planned.

It is not looking for signs of life itself but instead is looking for the chemical constitutes that allow life to start. Most scientists now believe that Mars is now a lifeless planet but perhaps many millions of years ago Mars was a world more akin to Earth, with an oxygen-rich atmosphere and lakes of water.

An orbiting satellite called Mars Orbital Surveyor has been circling Mars since 2006 taking very high-resolution photographs of the surface and has spotted evidence of water that is trapped beneath the surface. In some of the photographs it appears that during a Mars ‘summer’ some of this water has been seeping out and trickling across the surface. So there is a remote possibility that some microbial life could be living below the surface in the form of an algae type material.

But Mars seems to want to keep its secrets to itself; there have been 52 missions to Mars since 1960 by both the Americans and Russians and more than half of them have ended in failure. Even the UK has sent a probe to Mars – Beagle 2 was due to land on Christmas Day 2003 and search for life but it crashed onto the Martian surface. The Chinese also had a failure in 2003 when their orbiter failed to go into orbit around Mars and instead flew off into deep space never to be      seen again. And only last month Russia launched another rocket to Mars that failed to even leave Earth orbit!

There have been a few successes though, in 1976 the American Viking lander was the first to touchdown successfully and send back the first pictures from another world. In 2004 two American rovers called ‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’ landed safely and began exploring across the surface. Both rovers were only expected to last for around 90 days but incredibly are still working today six years later. Spirit has recently broken down but Opportunity has plodded on covering over 20 miles from its initial landing point.        

Everybody is agreed that we need to send astronauts to explore Mars but the journey is rife with problems. Going to the Moon took just four days while the trip to Mars would take almost a year to get there. Then the astronauts would have to live on the planet for at least another six months until the Earth and Mars were back in position for the return trip that would take another year. The psychological pressures on anyone being confined on a trip taking almost three years to complete would be unbearable.

Also with the success rate being so low there is still a massive danger in sending astronauts at this time. My prediction is that astronauts won’t land on Mars for at least another 50 years, although I hope I’m wrong!

Mars is currently visible very early in the mornings rising at around 1.00 am just below the constellation of Leo. But I’ll give more details about it at the beginning of next year when it is better placed for viewing.

Source:www.thenewsonline.es