Like millions of others around the world, I was glued to NASA TV in the early hours of Monday morning waiting to see if NASA’s Curiosity mission – a one-tonne rover vehicle that had endured a half-billion kilometre journey over the last eight months – would make it to the surface of the planet Mars in one piece. The challenges of landing on Earth’s sister world push science and engineering to their limits……plunging into the tenuous Martian atmosphere at a speed that would take us from Leicester to London in less than thirty seconds, decelerating and heating up to thousands of degrees centigrade as a result, deploying a parachute whilst still moving at supersonic velocities and firing a combination of retro rockets and a “skycrane” system – what seems like science fiction was in fact the least crazy engineering solution to delivering Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) to the surface. And all of this had to be done without any direct control from Earth – Mars is currently so far away that radio signals take 14 minutes to travel each way between Earth and Curiosity. Humanity’s brave ambassador was totally alone and self-reliant during this daring final phase of the mission.
MSL and skycrane. Credit: NASA.
Well, we’ve arrived in one piece – so what now? The science team includes Dr John Bridges from the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre. Currently based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California (Mission Control for MSL), we were fortunate enough to link up from Leicester with John a mere three hours after landing and hundreds of visitors to the National Space Centre were enthralled to be able to ask questions from one of the senior international participating scientists involved in this groundbreaking mission. The team’s research work will begin after testing of all onboard systems is completed over the next few days – their task will be to analyse the data that will flow back to Earth over the next two years as Curiosity begins roving over the surface of Gale crater and climbs the mountain peak at the heart of the crater. The mission is focused on looking at whether or not the conditions to support life ever existed on Mars and for the chemical building blocks of life itself. It’s the latest in a series of unmanned missions that first successfully landed on the Red Planet nearly forty years ago with NASA’s Viking missions which were targeted to look for evidence of microbes in the Martian dust.
Mars.
For the scientific community, Viking’s biology experiments may have given mainly negative (but partly ambiguous) results but for a seven year old child watching on TV the effects were life-changing. The concept of exploring alien worlds seized my imagination – Martian exploration, along with the Apollo moon missions, were the triggers for a love affair with astronomy, physics and science in general. Astrology (the idea that the star signs and planets control one’s moods, fortunes and destiny) may be entertainment nonsense, but the scientific exploration of Mars has literally reshaped the direction my own life has taken.
In the 36 years since Viking, humanity’s understanding of Mars has been totally transformed. It’s smaller than Earth, colder (being further from the Sun) and with an atmosphere so thin that it many ways, the conditions on Mars are more like the Moon than our home planet……all this we knew before Viking. Yet, since 1976, an armada of other orbiters and successful landers on Mars have discovered tantalising clues that billions of years ago, Mars was a warmer, wetter world with rivers, seas, a thicker atmosphere and much better conditions for the evolution of life. Understanding the schizophrenic nature of a world seemingly lunar in appearance but with echoes of a much more Earthlike past has been akin to a four-decade ongoing series of “Mars CSI” episodes that continue to confound, challenge and inspire.
A rocky area of the martian landscape. Credit: NASA.
In spite of all our speculation, theories and yearning, Earth is the only place in the Universe where we know that life – that miracle of chemistry – ever established a foothold. Confirming that it has happened elsewhere – now, or even in the distant past – would be among the biggest discoveries in the history of science. For hundreds of years, scientists, philosophers and humanity as a whole has speculated about whether Mars ever was – or still is – the “abode of life”. Perhaps we will not have to wait too much longer for an answer.
