Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A curiosity on Mars


A recent major science event has been the successful arrival and spectacular landing on Mars of the NASA rover Curiosity. This rover will be busy on Mars for years to come and developments are eagerly anticipated. See BBC reports here and here.
While not designed to detect life directly I would expect it to find some positive indications of ancient or recent life or even just of suitable environmental conditions. It has recently been found that lichen can survive under Martian conditions and the same may be true of bacteria.