Holiday on Mars

Thanksgiving is a great holiday for Mars. Of course, the red planet has no pilgrims, Indians or stuffing, but it does have “Turkey Haven”. This long weekend, the Opportunity rover will be conducting scientific studies near the summit of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater, nicknamed Turkey Haven. You can read more about Opportunity’s fall and winter plans at Universe Today.

Of course, the real Mars rover making news this weekend is Curiosity. The launch has been pushed back to Saturday (scheduled for 7am Pacific), but you can start following it Friday through the Tweetup. The Academy’s ever fearless Ryan Wyatt, director of the Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization, will be at Kennedy Space Center tweeting live—follow @calacademy to keep up with the events.

The rover is set to land on Mars in August 2012. Its minimum two-year mission is set to look for life, in all its possible forms, on the red planet. We’ve written about Mars’ potential watery (and life-filled?) past, but what clues might Curiosity find about current Martian life?  The New York Times has a great article this week about the existence of methane on Mars.

Methane molecules are easily blown apart by ultraviolet light from the Sun, so any methane floating around must have been released recently.

Could the gas be burbling from something alive? Cows, after all, burp methane on Earth. Other creatures, including a class of micro-organisms that live without oxygen, also produce methane.

A publication this week in Astrobiology reminds us that life can take many forms. Physicists looking at exoplanets believe we shouldn’t be so “geocentric” when looking for aliens, Wired reports:

Alien life could be based on elements other than carbon, require liquids other than water, and gain energy through means other than sunlight.

What form may life take elsewhere? Curiosity may be the first to know. Just in case, we’d like to wish a happy Thanksgiving to one and all this holiday!




NASA/JPL, colorization by Stu Atkinson