SO CLOSE, SO FAR

             

Pedro Alfonso Ocaña Fernández TAREA GRUPAL 1 IN2.

 As here on Earth some are striving to simply survive, Curiosity lands on the Red Planet just to show that we are still too far from many other existences.

On August 6^th this year, a sophisticated rover the size of a car will be sent to Mars.

NASA has several reasons to conform to this mission but the most ambitious one is to continue the hunt for extra-terrestrial life.

Surely many advances have been already made in this area. But uncertainties are still on the way. The arrival of America’s Viking landers on Mars, for instance, left even more evidence of an inhospitable place. Nevertheless, data from previous missions left scientists convinced that, in its past, Mars was much wetter than it is today. As water is thought to be vital for life, this is undoubtedly something important.

Returning to Curiosity, our sophisticated rover on Mars these days, we know that it carries high-tech instruments enough to analyse the chemical composition of rocks, to drill the surface and make a proper assessment on the existence of organic molecules that could have survived. If results become positive in that sense, surely it would be a great advance for the planetary science. If results in Mars turn to be nothing, there are other worlds to explore… as habitable worlds are not confined to the solar system. Moreover, there are indications that there is an immense amount of planets outside “our” world- exoplanets- that are still unexplored... Kepler space telescope (NASA July 28^th) led us think this way. But of course there were other surveys of planets whose answers Kepler could not respond. And the real big question is… how do these exoplanets work? Should their reactions be like earthly ones? One tends to think like that… One tends to be subjective. But the Universe is still too wide and unknown for us. No matter how many space missions Americans or Europeans can launch…

Efforts on planetary science are always grateful. Technology from NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), or the European Space Agency’s Darwin has been making great progress on finding images that could provide some evidence over other planets existence. But the TPF or the Darwin project have been on hold since 2006. NASA’s budget is not enough today to foresee the future. These are really ambitious and pricey projects. “Crisis” is here anyway. I like Dr Boss gloomy literally words about it: “Hope springs eternal”. 

http://www.economist.com/node/21559902?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/closertoencounter