“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
On Tuesday we wrote that Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. “It’s there,” said astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “waiting to be reached.” Today, NASA launched the Perseverance rover that will, if all goes as planned, touch down at the Jezero Crater landing site in February 2021 as a robotic explorer. Jezero, a 45-kilometre-wide crater is home to the remains of an ancient river delta. NASA researchers have detected deposits of hydrated silica from previous flybys –a mineral that’s especially good at preserving microfossils and other signs of past life.
It’s been said that Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. “It’s there,” said astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “waiting to be reached” and this July, 2020, NASA is planning to launch a mission to grab its first ‘taste’ of the Red Planet –the only known planet inhabited solely by robots. On Thursday, 30 July, NASA will launch the Perseverance rover that will, hopefully, touch down at the Jezero Crater landing site in February 2021 as a robotic explorer.
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
Science fiction writers have long had bizarre, vivid images of extraterrestrial life from Plutonians resembling intelligent ice cubes to H. G. Wells’ vision of silicon-aluminum men in “Another Basis for Life” dwelling in an atmosphere of gaseous sulfur on the shores of a liquid iron sea. Astrobiologists have hotly debated how closely extraterrestrial life would evolve to resemble that on Earth, with some arguing that with a slightly different roll of the “Darwinian dice”, Earth would have been inhabited by creatures unimaginable. Others argue that if there is biology elsewhere in the universe we would find it strikingly familiar down to the carbon-based machinery in its cells.
