NASA’s amazing announcement that it had discovered evidence of water on Mars right now adds extra drama to a race to discover life on the Red Planet that involves the Americans and Russians.
We might be able to say whether or not life ever probably existed on Mars in the next seven years, as both NASA and a team that involves the Russians and Europeans plan to send rovers to the surface of Mars in separate missions that could completely change the face of science, according to an Examiner.com report.
Orbiters and probes have been inspecting Mars for many years now, and while they’ve added a lot to our understanding of the planet in recent years, they aren’t specialized for searching for life. That’s going to change, though, in a race to the planet somewhat reminiscent of the Cold War standoffs between the United States and Russia that resulted in a man landing on the moon for the first time.
It won’t be quite the same environment, of course, especially since the Cold War has long since ended and Russia will be teaming up with staunch U.S. allies in Europe for its mission. But it certainly could result in a healthy competition that will result in more scientific discoveries.
It’s the discovery of water currently on the surface of Mars that has the scientific community excited for these new missions. NASA earlier this week announced that it had found evidence of salt streaks that suggested seasonal flows of water — so water is out there right now, not just in Mars’ distant past, and therefore conditions could be right for some type of microbial life to exist on the harsh planet.
To find out if this is possible, NASA will be launching a new rover in 2020 similar to the Curiosity mission, except that it will be tasked with looking for signs of biological life specifically, either currently or sometime in the distant past. Just two years later, a joint Russian and European effort — Exomars — is set to send a rover to the surface to drill into the soil to look for life.
That means a huge discovery could be coming in the next five to seven years, and whoever gets there first, it will be a massive boon to science.