• Question: have astronots arived on mars yet and if so has there been any life form found

    Asked by curtis7256 to Lauren, Colm on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: colm bracken

      colm bracken answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      No, not yet. Unless you consider robots to be astronauts. I do believe though that the first person to walk on Mars has been born already. This means that we are close to having an astronaut there. I think this is important for two reasons. First, robots are great at doing specific tasks, but they will never match a human explorer as the human can make his own decisions about what looks interesting and therefore what to study there.
      Second, I think exploration is built into human DNA, and we have barely scratched the surface of space and the planets. Human space exploration is one of the most important goals of mankind in my opinion.

    • Photo: Lauren Mc Keown

      Lauren Mc Keown answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      NASA has had high hopes to send a human to mars and there was even a proposed mission called “Moon, Mars and Beyond” a few years ago, but I think this fell by the wayside a little with government cuts. Sadly, space exploration is not prioritised anymore and people are forgetting that it is what originally brought us the TV, the Catscan, hey…even the zero – gravity pen :p

      However, there is a lonely little extremely intelligent robot up there on Mars called the Mars Curiosity Rover, which has managed to communicate to us back here on Earth all that is going on with Mars. The rover can take pictures at many angles and so far, has shown us some beautiful pictures of the Martian landscape which actually serve a very scientific purpose. The rover has detected evidence of past streams and water flow and has even burnt a few rocks itself to find out what elements exist within them. This on – site laboratory has allowed us to detect water vapor within the rocks, which is evidence for life. Unfortunately, Curiosity has also not found any methane – which is produced by living organisms, so it is unlikely that microbial life is currently living and breathing on Mars. Still, it’s pretty cool to think that Mars may once have had rivers and an ocean like what we have here on Earth!

Comments