Life needs CHNOPS, the six essential elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulphur. Curiosity found them on ancient Mars, but a new study shows Earth was born without them. Only a lucky impact with Theia made our world habitable. In contrast, Venus never stood a chance. Meet the three planetary siblings and discover why only Earth became a cradle for life.
Mars’s mantle contains ancient fragments up to 4km wide from its formation—preserved like geological fossils from the planet’s violent early history.
We interviewed Mitch Schulte, Mars Exploration Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC and NZ Astrobiology Network’s official adviser about what it is like to work on Mars.
Last week was Mars Week at Oxford Area School in the South Island. It was a great week running Mars Missions and learning all about Mars.
This week, the European Space Agency announced that radar data collected by ESA’s Mars Express point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars. There is a long way between finding liquid brine pools on Mars and finding life. However, there might be a similar place on Earth, the Blood Falls in Antarctica that originate from a hypersaline brine groundwater environment that supports an anaerobic microbial ecosystem sustained by chemical energy. Professor Ian Hawes from Waikato University explains the importance of the discovery from Mars.
We visited the Mars Yard at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney a few weeks ago and had a great time at this fantastic facility that is doing very important work.
NASA’s plans to get to Mars are a bit slower than Elon Musk’s. They have many more steps and have plans to achieve some quite impressive things such as space station orbiting the Moon and capturing an asteroid.
This is an analysis of human reactions if life was discovered on Mars. In it, four different personas are examined to see what conclusions can be drawn.
What if we find life on Mars, and what if we inadvertently cause an extinction event there. What can we do to prevent us destroying another ecosystem?
Mars and Antarctica have a lot of similarities when it comes to the difficulties that both places have for human settlement. This article looks at how we occupied Antarctica and what we might learn from that when it comes to sending humans to Mars.
In this article we consider what might happen to a Martian government in the event of a critical resupply not happening or a major disaster occurring or the discovery of life.
The irony of finding alien life as it stands right now is that we must terminate all life on Earth’s instruments and spacecraft sent out there to make absolutely sure that new life is detected…
As a continuation of the theme we have been looking at recently we explore the kinds of traits we would want in the main group of settlers that go to Mars and what we might be able to do know to influence this.
The plans to get to Mars are forming up amongst the space nations, but this doesn’t preclude smaller countries and interest groups contributing to getting humans on Mars.
This is an article dealing with the establishment of government on Mars and posing three questions that need to be thought about before we go.
(And we can do something about it.)
Life needs CHNOPS, the six essential elements Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulphur. Curiosity found them on ancient Mars, but a new study shows Earth was born without them. Only a lucky impact with Theia made our world habitable. In contrast, Venus never stood a chance. Meet the three planetary siblings and discover why only Earth became a cradle for life.
Mars’s mantle contains ancient fragments up to 4km wide from its formation—preserved like geological fossils from the planet’s violent early history.
Cosmic rays are hitting the atmosphere constantly. One of the products of the collisions is muons, and we can detect muons on the surface of the Earth to learn about the cosmic rays.
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