How NASA Could Look for Ancient Life on Mars (Infographic)?
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"Four billion years ago, Mars had abundant water and a substantial atmosphere. Life could have evolved there, but its reign would have been short: Mars soon lost most of its air and water to space. Scientists are planning the next steps to determine if life ever existed on the now Red Planet."
"The next-generation of Mars rovers would be based on the Curiosity rover — the centerpiece of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission — but would have upgraded instruments and be capable of storing returnable core samples of Mars soil."
"To detect life on Mars, +NASA could pursue three strategies. A robot probe could conduct tests on the Martian surface, then beam the results back to Earth ("in situ" investigation). Second, a sample-return mission could launch a bit of Mars soil back to Earth on a return rocket for study. The third option would be for humans to go to Mars in person."
"MIT’s Chris Carr designed a DNA-sequencing microchip capable of detecting DNA and RNA less than a million years old. The device, called SETG (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes), would have to isolate biological material, amplify and detect DNA and then sequence it. Carr hopes to have this device ready for a Mars lander that could launch in 2020."
Did life on Earth originate on Mars? Or did Earth dispatch life to Mars aboard a meteorite more than 3.5 billion years ago?
In order to investigate the possible origin of life on Mars and Earth, a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) want NASA’s next Mars rover to probe the Red Planet’s surface for genetic material by analyzing soil and ice samples with a DNA-sequencing microchip.
Finding signs of past life has already been set as one of the top priorities for the successor of the Mars rover Curiosity, NASA's most recent ambassador to Mars. But new research outlined in June in the journal Astrobiology says the new rover, which is slated to launch in 2020, should search instead for existing or recently dead lifeforms — where "recent" means as much as one million years old.
http://www.space.com/9983-life-mars-lose.html
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the
lower right corner of this enhanced-color photo taken by the space agency's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 27, 2013. The rover's tracks are visible
extending from its landing site in the left portion of the scene.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars has captured its first view of Earth from the surface of the Red Planet — a striking image that shows our home planet as a bright light in the Martian sky, with the moon shining nearby.
The Curiosity rover photographed Earth from Mars on Jan. 31 using the left-eye camera on its head-like science mast. You can see a video of Curiosity's Earth-from-Mars images here.
This annotated view points out Earth in the Mars night sky as seen by NASA's Curiosity rover on Jan. 31, 2014 about 80 minutes after local sunset
"A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright 'evening stars,'" NASA officials said in the image description. Aside from some processing to remove the effects of cosmic rays, the Curiosity photographs are unmodified, they added.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this photo of Earth from the surface of Mars on Jan. 31, 2014, 40 minutes after local sunset, using the left-eye camera on its mast. The inset shows a zoomed-in view of the Earth and moon in the image.
The Mars rover Curiosity snapped the photos of Earth from Mars during its 529th day on the Martian surface. The $2.5 billion rover has been exploring the vast Gale Crater on Mars since August 2012.