6 thoughts on “Curiosity”

      1. Yeah but the idea is that it might be carrying earth germs, that could pollute the water. If some extremophile survived the trip, and survived the 3 year stay on surface in perchlorates and radiation, then that’s news in itself.

  2. I’m a bit more concerned with the distance; 50km is a very long way, and that’s straight line distance. For comparison, Curiosity has been on Mars about 3 years and has traveled 8.6 kilometers. Opportunity has been on Mars almost 11 years, and has traveled 40km. Also, Curiosity has some issues already with wheel wear. IMHO, for these reasons, Curiosity couldn’t make the journey.

    However, if water is spotted within feasible range, I’d be all for it. Weir has it right on the contamination issue.

  3. The rovers have been driving across Mars for years. The hydrological cycle Weir posits in the article, and the 100% humidity observed by Viking suggests that the entire planet is damp. I’ve seen lots of images from Spirit and Opportunity where the soil retains the shape of the treads, instead of crumbling as one would expect with dry soil.

  4. I got to meet Andy Weir by Skype today and spent an hour interviewing him. He was really blunt about saying he is “not a fan of planetary protection.” Two arguments:

    1) We’ve sent non-sterilized proves to Mars already, so if Earth life kills Mars life, it’s already too late.

    2) Maybe we could sterilize future probes better, but there’s no way to prevent humans from shedding microbes everywhere we go. So, either we declare Mars forever off limits to humanity, or Mars life is going to have to take its chances. Guess which one he picked? 🙂

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