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What Is The Thesis Statement Of The Research Report Life On Mars?

Many students look for an excellent way to start a research paper on life on mars. However, to write a good thesis statement on the topic, a student must understand what a thesis statement is and its importance. This article aims to enlighten you on how to write a great thesis statement and give you some suggestions on thesis statements ideas you can use for your upcoming essay. But first: a thesis statement appears in the introductory paragraph and presents the essay’s main topic. In your life on mars paper, the thesis statement should introduce the reader to what you’ll be talking about. Your thesis statement is the most crucial part of an essay because it also sets the tone for the rest of the paper.

What Can You Write About in Your Life on Mars Thesis?

How to start thesis statement of the research report life on mars, why introduction to research report on life on mars matters, topics to write in your life on mars research paper thesis statement, let’s help you write the best life on mars thesis statements and papers.

There are three approaches you can use to write a thesis statement about life on Mars. They include giving detailed explanations, arguing your facts, and analyzing the topic. Here’s more to that:

• Explanatory thesis statement: This is where the writer gives a detailed account of a particular topic on life on mars. It requires you to be accurate on facts you write down and present evidence. These thesis statements do not support or oppose any claim.
• Argumentative thesis statement: Such a thesis statement requires you to express a specific view on life on Mars. After that, back or oppose your idea while supporting your stand. You need plenty of research to back your opinion. An example is ‘There can be no life on Mars.’
• Analytical thesis statement: It requires analysis of a particular topic, defining it, noting its various features, and evaluating it. Such thesis statements are suitable for writing papers where data analysis dominates.

An introduction to a research report done correctly will help you structure your argumentative, analytical or explanatory essay . Here are the steps to follow when writing your thesis statement on the research report on life on Mars:

• Conceptualize your thesis statement. It’s always a good idea to brainstorm and have the statement ready before writing. Have the relevant research to help you develop the body of your essay. In this case, read about life on Mars from several materials to establish points to write about.
• Answer a certain question. Your thesis statement should be an answer to a specific question. It should inform the reader what you’ll be writing about. For instance, a thesis statement such as ‘How life on mars negatively affects human life’ tells the reader that you intend to write about the adverse effects of mars on human life.
• Go straight to the point. A good thesis statement should be brief. While a couple of sentences may be acceptable, you should express your point in one sentence. For instance, an ideal thesis statement would be’ Human life on Mars is not possible.’

The introduction of any research report informs the reader of the paper’s contents. It gives some information on the subject that will be discussed. An excellent example of an introduction ought to:

• Provide the reader with background information about Mars.
• Talk about features of Mars similar to other planets like Earth.
• Briefly explain what you intend to write.

Are you figuring out what to write? The following are some examples regarding life on Mars that you can use as inspiration in your paper:

• How life on Mars would positively influence human life
• Analysis of the future possibilities of life on Mars
• Mars has the potential to support human life
• Evidence supporting the hypothesis of life on Mars

Feel free to reach out and learn more about thesis statements and relevant information to help you write a thesis. More so, we’ll write a variety of papers, from essays, homework, assignments, to dissertations, and guarantee quality essays with thesis statements that stand out.

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Assessment of Mars Science and Mission Priorities (2003)

Chapter: 13. conclusions, 13 conclusions.

It is humankind’s nature to explore our surroundings if it can be done. Fifty years ago, exploring Mars was not one of the things anyone could do. Those who were curious had to be content with fuzzy images of the planet, quivering in the oculars of telescopes. But that is far from the case today. Forty years ago, spacecraft began to be sent to the planets, and since then, the art of space exploration has become increasingly refined and discoveries have multiplied. We now have the capability, in principle, of reaching and exploring any object in the solar system. At the top of the list of targets of exploration is Mars, the most Earth-like, most accessible, most hospitable, and most intriguing of the planets. Two years ago, in October 2000, NASA recognized this by setting the study of Mars apart in a structured Mars Exploration Program. The present document reports on COMPLEX’s study of the program.

COMPLEX has compared the elements of the Mars Exploration Program with the research objectives for Mars that have been stressed by advisory panels, including this one, for more than 23 years. The committee found that correspondence between the two is not perfect. Currently, NASA focuses on the search for life, and its prerequisite, water, as the main drivers for Mars research, and has favored missions and experiments that support these goals. The space agency is not now in a position to ask direct questions about life on Mars, and has not been since the Viking mission in the 1970s, but the missions supported are designed to find the areas most promising for water and life, and to investigate in situ their chemical and petrographic potential for extant or fossil life.

Since NASA operates within budget constraints, this emphasis on one particular scientific objective necessarily comes at the expense of others. COMPLEX considered the question of whether NASA’s priorities are too heavily skewed toward life-related investigations. The committee decided, however, that this is not the case. The emphasis on life is well justified; the life-related investigations that are planned range over so much of Mars science that they will result in broad and comprehensive gains in our knowledge; and the areas most neglected as a consequence of this emphasis (see Chapter 12 ) will, to some extent, be investigated by projected missions of our international partners.

COMPLEX endorses the program NASA has set up, though the committee has also pointed out several areas of high scientific priority that the program does not address. This report stresses the uniquely important role of sample return in a program of Mars research, and urges that sample-return missions be performed as early as possible. Discussions and recommendations related to sample return appear in Chapters 7 and 12 . A more general review of the conclusions of this report is contained in the Executive Summary.

FIGURE 13.1 The study of Mars has come very far. This map is a reminder of how the planet was perceived in 1967. SOURCE: Mariner 69 Mars Chart, NASA MEC-2.

Our understanding of the most Earth-like planet beyond our own has increased dramatically in 35 years of spacecraft research (see Figure 13.1). Most of us will live to see an even greater increment of knowledge result from execution of the Mars Exploration Program that this report describes.

Within the Office of Space Science of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) special importance is attached to exploration of the planet Mars, because it is the most like Earth of the planets in the solar system and the place where the first detection of extraterrestrial life seems most likely to be made. The failures in 1999 of two NASA missions—Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander—caused the space agency's program of Mars exploration to be systematically rethought, both technologically and scientifically. A new Mars Exploration Program plan (summarized in Appendix A) was announced in October 2000. The Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX), a standing committee of the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council, was asked to examine the scientific content of this new program. This goals of this report are the following:

-Review the state of knowledge of the planet Mars, with special emphasis on findings of the most recent Mars missions and related research activities;

-Review the most important Mars research opportunities in the immediate future;

-Review scientific priorities for the exploration of Mars identified by COMPLEX (and other scientific advisory groups) and their motivation, and consider the degree to which recent discoveries suggest a reordering of priorities; and

-Assess the congruence between NASA's evolving Mars Exploration Program plan and these recommended priorities, and suggest any adjustments that might be warranted.

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“Is there life on Mars?” is a question people have asked for more than a century. But in order to finally get the answer, we have to know what to look for and where to go on the planet to look for evidence of past life. With the Perseverance rover set to land on Mars on February 18, 2021, we are finally in a position to know where to go, what to look for, and knowing whether there is, or ever was, life on the Red Planet.

Science fiction aside, we know that there were not ancient civilizations or a population of little green people on Mars. So, what sort of things do we need to look for to know whether there was ever life on Mars? Fortunately, a robust Mars exploration program, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, has enabled detailed mapping of the planet and constrained important information about the environment.

We now know that there were times in the ancient past on Mars when conditions were wetter and at least a little warmer than the fairly inhospitable conditions that are present today. And there were once habitable environments that existed on the surface. For example, the Curiosity rover has shown that more than three billion years ago, Gale crater was the location of a lake  that held water likely suitable for sustaining life. Armed with information about the conditions and chemical environments on the surface, the Perseverance rover is outfitted with a science payload of instruments finely tuned for extracting information related to any biosignatures that might be present and signal the occurrence of life .

Panoramic view of the interior and rim of Gale crater. Image generated from pictures captured by the Curiosity rover.

But where should we go on Mars to maximize the chances of accessing the rocks most likely to have held and preserve any evidence of past life? To get at that answer, I co-led a series of workshops attended by the Mars science community to consider various candidate landing sites and help determine which one had the highest potential for preserving evidence of past life. Using data from Mars orbiters coupled with more detailed information from landers and rovers, we started with around thirty candidate sites and narrowed the list over the course of four workshops and five years. Some sites were clearly less viable than others and were weeded out fairly quickly. But once the discussion focused on a couple of different types of potentially viable sites, the process became much tougher. In the end, the science community felt—and the Perseverance mission and NASA agreed—that Jezero crater was the best place to look for evidence of past life on Mars.

This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in Mars' Jezero Crater, which NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will explore for signs of fossilized microbial life. The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Express orbiter. The European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, operates the ESA mission. The High Resolution Stereo Camera was developed by a group with leadership at the Freie Universitat Berlin.

What is so special about Jezero crater and where is it? Jezero crater is ~30 miles (~49 km) across, was formed by the impact of a large meteorite, and is located in the northern hemisphere of Mars (18.38°N 77.58°E) on the western margin of the ancient and much larger Isidis impact basin. But what makes it special relates to events that happened 3.5 billion years ago when water was more active on the surface of Mars than it is today. Ancient rivers on the western side of Jezero breached the crater rim and drained into the crater, forming a river delta and filling the crater with a lake. From the study of river deltas on the Earth, we know that they typically build outwards into lakes as sediment carried by the associated river enters the lake, slows down, and is deposited. As this process continues, the delta builds out over the top of lake beds and can bury and preserve delicate and subtle signatures of past life. These “biosignatures” are what Perseverance will be looking for when it lands on the floor of the crater and explores the ancient lake beds and nearby delta deposits.

Perseverance will use its instruments to look for signs of ancient life in the delta and lake deposits in Jezero crater and will hopefully allow us to finally answer the question of whether there was ever life on Mars. In addition, Perseverance will begin the process of collecting samples that could one day be returned to Earth. The importance of sample return cannot be overstated. Whether or not evidence of past life is found by Perseverance’s instruments, the legacy enabled by samples the rover collects will be the “scientific gift that keeps on giving”. Once returned to Earth by a future mission, these Mars samples can be subjected to more detailed analysis by a much wider set of instruments than can be carried by Perseverance . Moreover, sample archiving can preserve material for future analysis here on Earth by new and/or more detailed instruments that may not yet exist. So even if Perseverance does not find evidence of past life, it will collect samples that, once returned to Earth, could provide new insight into the evolution of Mars and whether there was ever life on the Red Planet.

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Addressing the possibility of life on Mars

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In 2018, millions of people around the world caught glimpses of the planet Mars, discernible as a bright red dot in the summer’s night skies. Every 26 months or so, the red planet reaches a point in its elliptical orbit closest to Earth, setting the stage for exceptional visibility. This proximity also serves as an excellent opportunity for launching exploratory Mars missions, the next of which will occur in 2020 when a global suite of rovers will take off from Earth. 

The red planet was hiding behind the overcast, drizzling Boston sky on Oct. 11, when Mars expert John Grotzinger gave audiences a different perspective, taking them through an exploration of Mars' geologic history. Grotzinger, the Fletcher Jones Professor of Geology at the Caltech and a former professor in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), also used the eighth annual John Carlson Lecture to talk to the audience gathered at the New England Aquarium about the ongoing search for life on Mars.

Specializing in sedimentology and geobiology, Grotzinger has made significant contributions to understanding the early environmental history of the Earth and Mars and their habitability. In addition to involvement with the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission and the High Resolution Science Experiment (HiRISE) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Grotzinger served as project scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which operates the Curiosity roving laboratory. Curiosity explores the rocks, soils, and air of the Gale Crater to find out whether Mars ever hosted an environment that was habitable for microbial life during its nearly 4.6-billion-year history.

“What I’d like to do is give you a very broad perspective of how we as scientists go about exploring a planet like Mars, with the rather audacious hypothesis that there could have been once life there,” he told the audience. “This is a classic mission of exploration where a team of scientists heads out into the unknown.”

“Simple one-celled microorganisms we know have existed on Earth for the last three-and-a-half billion years — a long time. They originated, they adapted, they evolved, and they didn’t change very much until you had the emergence of animals just 500 million years ago,” Grotzinger said. “For basically 3 billion years, the planet was pretty much alone with microbes. So, the question is: Could Mars have done something similar?”

Part of the research concerning whether or not Mars ever hosted ancient life involves identifying the environmental characteristics necessary for the survival of living organisms, including liquid water. Currently, the thin atmosphere around Mars prevents the accumulation of a standing body of water, but that may not always have been the case. Topographic features documented by orbiters and landers suggest the presence of ancient river channels, deltas and possibly even an ocean on Mars, “just like we see on Earth,” Grotzinger said. “This tells us that, at least, for some brief period of time if you want to be conservative, or maybe a long period of time, water was there [and] the atmosphere was denser. This is a good thing for life.”

To describe how scientists search for evidence of past habitability on Mars, Grotzinger told the story of stratigraphy — a discipline within geology that focuses on the sequential deposition and layering of sediments and igneous rocks. The changes that occur layer-to-layer indicate shifts in the environmental conditions under which different layers were deposited. In that manner, interpreting stratigraphic records is simple, he said.

“It’s like reading a book. You start at the bottom and you get to the first chapter, and you get to the top and you get to the last chapter,” Grotzinger said. “Sedimentary rocks are records of environmental change … what we want to do is explore this record on Mars.”

While Grotzinger and Curiosity both continue their explorations of Mars, scientists from around the world are working on pinpointing new landing sites for future Mars rovers which will expand the search for ancient life. This past summer, the SAM (Sample Analysis on Mars) instrument aboard the Curiosity rover detected evidence of complex organic matter in Gale Crater, a discovery which further supports the notion that Mars may have been habitable once.

“We know that Earth teems with life and we have enough of a fossil record to know that it’s been that way since we get to the oldest, well-preserved rocks on Earth. But yet, when you go to those rocks, you almost never find evidence of life,” Grotzinger said, leaving space for hope. “And that’s because, in the conversion of the sedimentary environment to the rock, there are enough mineralogic processes that are going on that the record of life gets erased. And so, I think we’re going to have to try over and over again.”

Following the lecture, members and friends of EAPS attended a reception in the main aquarium that featured some of the research currently taking place in the department. Posters and demonstrations were arranged around the aquarium’s cylindrical 200,000-gallon tank simulating a Caribbean coral reef, and attendees were able to chat with presenters and admire aquatic life while learning about current EAPS projects.

EAPS graduate student, postdoc, and research scientist presenters included Tyler Mackey, Andrew Cummings, Marjorie Cantine, Athena Eyster, Adam Jost, and Julia Wilcots from the Bergmann group; Kelsey Moore and Lily Momper from the Bosak group; Eric Beaucé, Ekaterina Bolotskaya, and Eva Golos from the Morgan group; Jonathan Lauderdale and Deepa Rao from the Follows group; Sam Levang from the Flierl group; Joanna Millstein and Kasturi Shah from the Minchew group; and Ainara Sistiaga, Jorsua Herrera, and Angel Mojarro from the Summons group.

The John H. Carlson Lecture series communicates exciting new results in climate science to general audiences. Free of charge and open to the general public, the annual lecture is made possible by a generous gift from MIT alumnus John H. Carlson to the Lorenz Center in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Anyone interested in join the invitation list for next year’s Carlson Lecture is encouraged to contact Angela Ellis .

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Life on Mars: A Definite Possibility

Was Mars once a living world? Does life continue, even today, in a holding pattern, waiting until the next global warming event comes along? Many people would like to believe so. Scientists are no exception. But so far no evidence has been found that convinces even a sizable minority of the scientific community that the red planet was ever home to life. What the evidence does indicate, though, is that Mars was once a habitable world . Life, as we know it, could have taken hold there.

The discoveries made by NASA ’s Opportunity rover at Eagle Crater earlier this year (and being extended now at Endurance Crater) leave no doubt that the area was once ‘drenched’ in water . It might have been shallow water. It might not have stuck around for long. And billions of years might have passed since it dried up. But liquid water was there, at the martian surface, and that means that living organisms might have been there, too.

So suppose that Eagle Crater – or rather, whatever land formation existed in its location when water was still around – was once alive. What type of organism might have been happy living there?

Probably something like bacteria. Even if life did gain a foothold on Mars, it’s unlikely that it ever evolved beyond the martian equivalent of terrestrial single-celled bacteria. No dinosaurs; no redwoods; no mosquitoes – not even sponges, or tiny worms. But that’s not much of a limitation, really. It took life on Earth billions of years to evolve beyond single-celled organisms. And bacteria are a hardy lot. They are amazingly diverse, various species occupying extreme niches of temperature from sub-freezing to above-boiling; floating about in sulfuric acid; getting along fine with or without oxygen. In fact, there are few habitats on Earth where one or another species of bacterium can’t survive.

What kind of microbe, then, would have been well adapted to the conditions that existed when Eagle Crater was soggy? Benton Clark III , a Mars Exploration Rover ( MER ) science team member, says his “general favorite” candidates are the sulfate-reducing bacteria of the genus Desulfovibrio . Microbiologists have identified more than 40 distinct species of this bacterium.

Eating Rocks

We tend to think of photosynthesis as the engine of life on Earth. After all, we see green plants nearly everywhere we look and virtually the entire animal kingdom is dependent on photosynthetic organisms as a source of food. Not only plants, but many microbes as well, are capable of carrying out photosynthesis. They’re photoautotrophs: they make their own food by capturing energy directly from sunlight.

But Desulfovibrio is not a photoautotroph; it’s a chemoautotroph. Chemoautotrophs also make their own food, but they don’t use photosynthesis to do it. In fact, photosynthesis came relatively late in the game of life on Earth. Early life had to get its energy from chemical interactions between rocks and dirt, water, and gases in the atmosphere. If life ever emerged on Mars, it might never have evolved beyond this primitive stage.

Desulfovibrio makes its home in a variety of habitats. Many species live in soggy soils, such as marshes and swamps. One species was discovered all snug and cozy in the intestines of a termite. All of these habitats have two things in common: there’s no oxygen present; and there’s plenty of sulfate available.

Sulfate reducers, like all chemoautotrophs, get their energy by inducing chemical reactions that transfer electrons between one molecule and another. In the case of Desulfovibrio, hydrogen donates electrons, which are accepted by sulfate compounds. Desulfovibrio, says Clark, uses “the energy that it gets by combining the hydrogen with the sulfate to make the organic compounds” it needs to grow and to reproduce.

The bedrock outcrop in Eagle Crater is chock full of sulfate salts. But finding a suitable electron donor for all that sulfate is a bit more troublesome. “My calculations indicate [that the amount of hydrogen available is] probably too low to utilize it under present conditions,” says Clark. “But if you had a little bit wetter Mars, then there [would] be more water in the atmosphere, and the hydrogen gas comes from the water” being broken down by sunlight.

So water was present; sulfate and hydrogen could have as an energy source. But to survive, life as we know it needs one more ingredient carbon. Many living things obtain their carbon by breaking down the decayed remains of other dead organisms. But some, including several species of Desulfovibrio, are capable of creating organic material from scratch, as it were, drawing this critical ingredient of life directly from carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) gas. There’s plenty of that available on Mars.

All this gives reason to hope that life that found a way to exist on Mars back in the day when water was present. No one knows how long ago that was. Or whether such a time will come again. It may be that Mars dried up billions of years ago and has remained dry ever since. If that is the case, life is unlikely to have found a way to survive until the present.

Tilting toward Life

But Mars goes through cycles of obliquity, or changes in its orbital tilt. Currently, Mars is wobbling back and forth between 15 and 35 degrees’ obliquity, on a timescale of about 100,000 years. But every million years or so, it leans over as much as 60 degrees. Along with these changes in obliquity come changes in climate and atmosphere. Some scientists speculate that during the extremes of these obliquity cycles, Mars may develop an atmosphere as thick as Earth’s, and could warm up considerably. Enough for dormant life to reawaken.

“Because the climate can change on long terms,” says Clark, ice in some regions on Mars periodically could “become liquid enough that you would be able to actually come to life and do some things – grow, multiply, and so forth – and then go back to sleep again” when the thaw cycle ended. There are organisms on Earth that, when conditions become unfavorable, can form “spores which are so resistant that they can last for a very long time. Some people think millions of years, but that’s a little controversial.”

Desulfovibrio is not such an organism. It doesn’t form spores. But its bacterial cousin, Desulfotomaculum, does. “Usually the spores form because there’s something missing, like, for example, if hydrogen’s not available, or if there’s too much [oxygen], or if there’s not sulfate. The bacteria senses that the food source is going away, and it says, ‘I’ve got to hibernate,’ and will form the spores. The spores will stay dormant for extremely long periods of time. But they still have enough machinery operative that they can actually sense that nutrients are available. And then they’ll reconvert again in just a matter of hours, if necessary, to a living, breathing bacterium, so to speak. It’s pretty amazing,” says Clark.

That is not to say that future Mars landers should arrive with life-detection equipment tuned to zero in on species of Desulfovibrio or Desulfotomaculum. There is no reason to believe that life on Mars, if it ever emerged, evolved along the same lines as life on Earth, let alone that identical species appeared on the two planets. Still, the capabilities of various organisms on Earth indicate that life on Mars – including dormant organisms that could spring to life again in another few hundred thousand years – is certainly possible.

Clark says that he doesn’t “know that there’s any organism on Earth that could really operate on Mars, but over a long period of time, as the martian environment kept changing, what you would expect is that whatever life had started out there would keep adapting to the environment as it changed.”

Detecting such organisms is another matter. Don’t look for it to happen any time soon. Spirit and Opportunity were not designed to search for signs of life, but rather to search for signs of habitability. They could be rolling over fields littered with microscopic organisms in deep sleep and they’d never know it. Even future rovers will have a tough time identifying the martian equivalent of dormant bacterial spores.

“The spores themselves are so inert,” Clark says, “it’s a question, if you find a spore, and you’re trying to detect life, how do you know it’s a spore, [and not] just a little particle of sand? And the answer is: You don’t. Unless you can find a way to make the spore do what’s called germinating, going back to the normal bacterial form.” That, however, is a challenge for another day.

Where did it all go wrong: a tale of life on Mars

Following on from a previous article, Miles Gilroy discusses why the atmospheres of Mars and Earth are so different.

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By Miles Gilroy , SciTech Deputy Editor

In Epigram 's 2024 Freshers print, I wrote an article about photolysis, a process that we believe happened in the atmosphere of Mars billions of years ago and could be the initial process required for life to emerge. In that article, I mentioned that, due to the similarity between early Mars and Earth, it is likely that, if photolysis happened on Mars, it also happened on Earth and could be the reason we have life here. But this leads to the question of why there is such diverse and complex life on Earth while Mars is a barren, seemingly lifeless wasteland - at what point did Earth and Mars become so different and why?

We aren’t entirely sure why this ecological disparity exists. However, it is very likely that the answer lies in the fate of the liquid water (as mentioned in the photolysis article), which is vastly different for the two planets.

Thanks to our extensive surveys of the surface of Mars, we know that it was once like Earth still is: teeming with flowing rivers and dominated by magnificent oceans and lakes (this is evident from the meticulous carving of the surface that could only be a result of water flow). However, with just a brief look at the red planet today, it is obvious that this is no longer the case - it is dry… drier than a nun’s [joke redacted].

So what happened to all of Mars’ water? Two words: magnetic field, well, global magnetic field, so technically three words. This may sound irrelevant, but all will become clear. Mars has localised, remanent magnetic fields, meaning some parts of the surface (ferromagnetic parts) still produce magnetic fields. But it doesn’t have a global magnetic field like Earth does. Basically, Earth is a giant magnet and Mars is not, although it is covered in small ones. These remanent magnetic fields point to the existence of a global magnetic field in the past, but this has since been lost. 

Global magnetic fields are generated by the rotation of liquid iron around the core of a planet. It is unknown why Mars lost its magnetic field, but it is likely due to partial solidification of its core, reducing the rate of rotation. Anyway, without a magnetic field, Mars is vulnerable to solar winds,  streams of charged particles originating in the sun. When these particles approach Earth, they are deflected by the magnetic field, but when they approach Mars, they just pass straight through the atmosphere, pushing molecules out into space. 

We believe that this is what happened to most of the water on Mars. It evaporated and rose into the atmosphere only to be broken down by solar UV radiation into hydrogen and oxygen (photolysis), at which point, the lighter hydrogen was swept away by the solar winds, and the heavier oxygen oxidised the surface, creating a rusty-looking, red planet.

After a few billion years, all the liquid water was gone, lost to space. But it’s not all bad news for Amy Wong or the Ice Warriors. Recent analysis of data from NASA’s InSight mission suggests that there is still enough liquid water on Mars to cover the entire surface in a one to two kilometre deep ocean. 

The InSight lander, equipped with a seismometer, was sent to Mars to study the composition of the planet. It measured seismic waves and determined what materials they had travelled through based on their speeds, since the speed of a seismic wave depends on the density of the medium. Using this method, the same that is used on Earth to find oil reserves, Vashan Wright and Matthias Morzfield of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and Michael Manga of the University of California, Berkeley deduced that many of the waves had passed through rocks that were saturated with liquid water between 11.5 and 20 kilometres below the surface.

Unfortunately, due to the depth of these reservoirs, it is extremely impractical to study them properly. For reference, the deepest hole ever dug on Earth is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia at 12.2 kilometres deep. This was a result of 20 years of digging that eventually had to be aborted because the temperature became too high for the equipment to function. So, mining a hole deep enough to find this water would be hard enough on Earth, let alone 140 million miles away on a practically atmosphere-less planet. But, just because we can’t reach it, it doesn’t mean life can’t exist down there. In fact Manga says ‘I don't see why [the underground reservoir] is not a habitable environment.’ There are similar places on Earth that happily support life.

Life on Mars remains a mystery, but it also remains a possibility

We believe that photolysis happened in the atmospheres of Earth and Mars billions of years ago but, due to some magnetic field issues, Mars’ atmosphere was mostly swept away by solar winds, while Earth's grew into a complex array of organic chemicals, synergistically supported by life. This realistically leaves the water that escaped into the crust of Mars as our last hope at finding cosmic neighbours. Life on Mars remains a mystery, but it also remains a possibility.

Featured image: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Do you think life could be hiding in these underground reservoirs?

Big tech faces major lawsuits

Bristol ballooning basics, you stink and people love it, photolysis: the key to life on mars, review: feet @ thekla, preview: bob vylan @ marble factory, ‘i have an awful lot to thank epigram for’ | in conversation with epigram alumnus holly smale on turning geek girl into a hit netflix show, match report: ubwfc 1’s vs hartpury’s 1’s (3-1).

Writing Life on Mars: Posthuman Imaginaries of Extraterrestrial Colonization and the NASA Mars Rover Missions

• First Online: 01 January 2022

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• Jens Temmen 6  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ((PSLW))

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Focusing on three different life narratives and practices of Mars colonization—the NASA rover missions, the technoliberal campaign to settle the red planet by space entrepreneur Elon Musk, and the critical activist project “Planetary Personhood”—Jens Temmen analyzes how, in the context of climate change debates, human colonization of other planets has been reframed as inevitable and necessary to ensure the survival of humanity. Temmen’s contribution focuses on how these “astrofuturist” narratives negotiate the utopian vision of space colonization as a transformative posthuman experience of escape from the terrestrial limits placed on humanity, and it discusses whether life writing as a format allows for a thorough and critical posthuman inquiry of humanity’s anthropocentrism.

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Scorched Earth: Discourses of Multiplanetarity, Climate Change, and Martian Terraforming in Finch and Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars .

The Universe Decentered: Transcultural Perspectives on Astrobiology and Big History

Missions and Explorers: “Amundsen” as a Key to Reading Alice Munro’s Other Stories

Ganser, “Astrofuturism,” 36.

Ibid., 35, 37.

See Ganser, “Astrofuturism,” 36, 40. See Kilgore, “Astrofuturism,” 1, quoted in Ganser, “Astrofuturism,” 35.

Davenport, The Space Barons , 4, 123, 143–144.

See Ganser, “Astrofuturism,” 37, 40. See Redmond, “The Whiteness of Cinematic,” 348.

See Braidotti, The Posthuman , 9.

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 2.

See Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover , 20.

Similar to the idea of “greenwashing” products as environmental-friendly, the concept of “double red washing” refers to how the privatization of the space industry is promoted by Musk and others as the only way to achieve the colonization of the red planet, and to how both the privatized space industry and Mars colonization are depicted as progressive measures aiming for greater social justice (see Marx, “Elon Musk is Planning”).

See Braidotti, The Posthuman , 43–44.

Opportunity’s sister rover “Spirit” had shut down in 2009 already.

See “‘My battery is low.’”

See Simon, “Opinion.”

See Butler, “Precariousness and Grievability.”

Butler analyzes how in times of war and crisis, the notion of a grievable death is a political issue of enormous significance. Focusing on 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq, Butler describes how public mourning can be used as a way of supporting the war effort and of constructing nationalist (non-)belonging, but also as a mode of dehumanization of the lives that are specifically constructed as ungrievable. Even though Butler’s work is deeply immersed in the specific context of warfare, her assumptions are valid for the way in which the rovers and their demise figure as a ledger for nationalistic sentiments of belonging and pride.

The playlist consists of the music that NASA staffers had sent to Opportunity along with its wake-up command after the storm had crippled him and includes songs such as David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?,” “Staying Alive” by the BeeGees, as well as Wham!‘s “Wake Me up Before You Go-Go.”

Simon, “Opinion.”

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 19.

Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 19.

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 5, 19, 34.

Braidotti, The Posthuman , 2.

Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover , 20.

See Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 2.

The way that the rovers seem to break barriers between technology, human, and animal, make them comparable to other posthuman icons, such as the cloned sheep Dolly, which, according to Braidotti, is an entity “no longer an animal but not yet fully a machine,” 74. The rovers, no longer a machine but not yet fully human, seem to be on that same spectrum.

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 6. See Markley, Dying Planet , 270.

Braidotti, The Posthuman , 43–44.

See Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover , 7, 170–171.

Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover , 25.

Ibid., 171.

Ibid., 176.

Keeling, “Queer OS,” 157.

See Braidotti, The Posthuman , 9, 124, 125–126. See Mbembe, Necropolitics .

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 1, 6. Atanasoski and Vora’s work focuses predominately on self-reproducing robots which are projected to be a vital part of the first steps to Martian colonization, but which have not yet been constructed or deployed (see ibid., 2). The way that NASA frames the current Mars rovers as links in human evolution, allows, I would argue, for a broadening of Atanasoski and Vora’s argument to apply here as well.

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 18, 68.

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 18. See Vertesi, Seeing Like a Rover , 31–32. A prominent and striking example is the influential essay by aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, titled “The Significance of the Martian Frontier,” which advocates for Martian colonization through frontier discourses in general and by directly drawing on Frederick Jackson Turner’s infamous frontier thesis in particular, 13.

The concept of terra nullius is a core tenet of settler colonialism that relies on framing the Indigenous populations of newly “discovered” lands as less-than-human and therefore without claim to their own land (see Robertson, Conquest by Law ).

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 2.

See Temmen, “From HI-SEAS to Outer Space.”

See Saraf, “‘We’d Rather Eat Rocks.’”

See Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 68.

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 6.

Even though space agencies around the globe rely (and have relied for a long time) on private industry contractors, space travel is not a privatized business, but regulated on a national and international level. Private businesses can partner with national agencies, but they cannot conduct space travel on their own. While Musk and others have become important players as contractors, their vision includes completely privatizing space travel, which would, in their perspective, break a detrimental nation-state monopoly on space travel.

Davenport, The Space Barons , 4.

Ibid., 4–5.

See Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth , 175–176.

Messeri, Placing Outer Space , 18.

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 11.

Davenport, The Space Barons , 1–2.

See Davenport, The Space Barons , 2.

Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 1.

See Davenport, The Space Barons , 49–60, 117.

“When Slow Violence Sprints.”

Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth , 176.

See Braidotti, The Posthuman , 5–6. See Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History,” 221–222.

See Heise, Sense of Planet , 25. See Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 16.

Nonhuman Nonsense, “Planetary Personhood.”

See New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Office, “Te Urewera Act 2014.”

See Atanasoski and Vora, “Why the Sex Robot,” 14.

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Temmen, J. (2021). Writing Life on Mars: Posthuman Imaginaries of Extraterrestrial Colonization and the NASA Mars Rover Missions. In: Batzke, I., Espinoza Garrido, L., Hess, L.M. (eds) Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77973-3_8

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