Humanity Is Sending 3 New Rovers to Mars in 2020 to Look for Signs of Life (vice.com) 33
The space agencies of the US, Europe, Russia, and China are all launching rovers to Mars this year. From a report: The 2010s saw Mars welcome NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on the red planet in 2012, and bid farewell to the Opportunity rover, which was declared dead in February after 14 years on the Martian surface. Curiosity is now the only working rover on the planet, signaling the end of a decadal era in the exploration of Mars. But even as this older generation of Mars-cars winds down, a flurry of new rover missions is gearing up to redefine Martian road trips for a new decade. Three different rovers are scheduled to launch to Mars during the summer of 2020: NASA's Mars 2020 rover, Europe and Russia's Rosalind Franklin, and China's Huoxing-1. If this trio manages to successfully land on Mars in 2021, it would mark the first time that the planet has ever hosted three operational rovers (or even four, assuming that Curiosity is still rolling). The presence of two rovers from agencies other than NASA would also diversify Martian surface operations after decades of American dominance on the planet.
Oh (Score:2)
The Humanity!
Signal? What signal? (Score:2)
I would have thought the calendar not saying "201x" anymore would have been a better signal for the end of a decadal era, what with Curiosity still working and all...
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As long as they're spending those dollars as quickly as possible the battle can continue.
Re:no, we're sending three rovers to Mars ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a perfect example of the dead weight humanity has to drag along while trying to move forward.
Science matters. More than you. More than all of us.
Humans are just one species among many throughout the history of life on Earth. Sooner or later, our species will self-destruct, or simply run its course and go extinct. And when it's gone, our science and cultures will be our only legacy to the intelligent species that will succeed us.
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Science does not matter unless it is instrumental in helping those in power to keep it. The humanity has made the scientific progress necessary to build Utopia, but the capitalist "ownership" of this knowledge will lead us to extinction.
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You're a perfect example of the dead weight humanity has to drag along while trying to move forward.
Science matters. More than you. More than all of us.
Humans are just one species among many throughout the history of life on Earth. Sooner or later, our species will self-destruct, or simply run its course and go extinct. And when it's gone, our science and cultures will be our only legacy to the intelligent species that will succeed us.
And what will this next species read our science on? the media we use to hold modern science is rather fragile. Paper rots, and they wont exactly be using a dead internet or have the means to use any electronic storage devices we have left laying around. Most people cant even read a 30 year old Floppy disk how do you expect some post human intelligence to read anything from our "Paperless" society Humanity's legacy will be the littler we left on the moon. on earth it will be what our ancestors carved in
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I'd encourage you to read up on the 'Singularity' as proposed by Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis. The successor to Homo Sapiens may well be called "Homo Technologis" as we integrate our technology, including computation, communications, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and prosthetics, into ourselves. It's very likely that many people alive today will refuse to recognize their grandchildren as being "human" at all.
Chinese and European Rovers (Score:1, Insightful)
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Dint u rtfa bro it's important to have diversity on mars u need to be a good ally to the lgbtq rovers bro
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India so far has a 100% success rate on Mars missions, and (IIRC) 80% on Lunar missions. Considering that their Mars orbiter mission was carried out on a budget less than what an Indian industrialist spent on his daughter's wedding I'm quite impressed with their work so far.
If you don't find life then try, try again. (Score:3, Insightful)
How many times will we keep looking for life on Mars before we give up?
I'm thinking the only case we should be looking for life on Mars is if Mark Watney didn't make it to the MAV before it was forced to launch without him.
If we are going to look for life on Mars then we should have a team of scientists there to do a thorough search. Just be sure to bring a botanist and potatoes. Oh, and a wisecracking ace pilot.
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Because it's sexy and allows us to do a lot of other useful science at the same time. We can look for resources that human visitors will need, for example.
Refine missions (Score:2)
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Wow. How delicate a snowflake do you have to be to get trolled by this?
Re:If you don't find life then try, try again. (Score:4, Interesting)
So they came up with a bunch of theories to explain how that particular experiment could have come up with a positive result in the absence of life. And they designed new experiments to try to detect life in different ways, and put them aboard later landers and rovers. These have continuously returned positive or ambiguous results. The latest one aboard the Curiosity rover detected unusually large amounts of methane - more than you'd expect from non-biological chemistry.
The evidence is pointing towards Mars either having life/having had life in the distant past, or some complex chemical processes which are doing a damn good job of mimicking signs of life. They're just being extremely careful to eliminate all other possible explanations before they arrive at that earth-shattering conclusion that Mars has/had life. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. They don't want a repeat of the Allan Hills meteorite [wikipedia.org].
Re:If you don't find life then try, try again. (Score:4, Informative)
They haven't looked since 1976 - when they got mixed results. One experiment detected almost exactly the results they predicted if life had been present, and the other three did not. Since then, there has been no experiment intended to find living organisms, only favorable conditions. These missions are different, they are actually looking directly for life signs.
List of failed predictions like this (Score:2)
...decades of American dominance on the planet (Score:2)
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In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man rules.
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CH4 (Score:1)
Mars has an annual blush of methane which, granted, can be due to inorganic reactions - but organic ones as well.
Seems very relevant to be searching for life there.
And if they do find life that can-o-worms "life through out the universe" lid is just that little bit cracked open. Best of luck to them!
Irony (Score:3)
Mars is the only planet, inhabited exclusively by robots, trying to prove they are not the only inhabitants.
Re: Irony (Score:2)
...inhabited exclusively by robots
Robots that fart... nice theory.
War of the Worlds (Score:2)