Alien Life On Mars Will Be Revealed By Sending Humans To The Red Planet

By Kenn Mark - 10 Dec '16 20:48PM

Sending humans to Mars would be a great step in the search for life beyond Earth. The NASA chief scientist revealed that the red planet holds answers about fundamental scientific questions of life and space that evolved on the planet.

Ellen Stofan confirmed at a scientific workshop in Irvine, California, that the main goal is finding signs of alien life beyond the planet. The workshop was titled "Searching for Life Across Space and Time." She believed that humans can perform tasks that would be difficult for a rover to execute.

The Curiosity rover can only examine beyond a depth of 6.5 feet (2 meters), while humans can operate drills and could go deeper. The Curiosity rover touched down the fourth planet in the solar system in August 2012. The rover already achieved goals of finding alien life in an area near its landing site. The agenda for sending exploration on Mars is the search for bio-signatures, cache samples for potential return to Earth.

The NASA revealed last July 31 that the new Mars 2020 rover carries seven instruments. These instruments are designed to identify rocks that might reveal the evidence of past life on the red planet. The Mars 2020 mission will lead to collecting rocks and bring those for examining here on planet Earth. Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA said that materials to be used are well-equipped.

The Mars 2020 rover got six wheels and weighs about one ton. Like the Curiosity, it will be aided by a rocket-powered sky crane. Curiosity was loaded ten instruments, while Mars 2020 will only have seven. Two of those instruments are MastCam Z and SuperCam.

MastCam Z is a stereoscopic camera system that has the ability to zoom in on specific targets. SuperCam is an advanced version of Curiosity's SuperCam and it allows to laser-shooting and dogged the chemical composition of rocks from afar. This is a great opportunity to sort of explore Mars with humans in a very different way using latest and updated technology.