Mars landing is out of this world
SURELY the safe landing of Nasa’s Perseverance rover on mars is cause for celebration. after the pain and sorrow of the past year, it’s heartening to see that mankind continues to push the boundaries of science and technology. With the riskiest part of the two-year, multi-billion-pound endeavour completed, the rover can begin its careful search for signs of microbial life on mars. Never before has a science mission gone to the Red Planet with such sophisticated instruments. Precision motors and gearheads will be used to power Perseverance’s small robotic arms as it sifts and drills into the sediment. The most valuable samples will be packaged ready for a future operation to return them to earth for analysis. While the mission isn’t risk free, this is a significant hurdle cleared. We can all use something to cheer about, even if it is more than 34 million miles away.
ANDREW GIBSON, Finchampstead, Berks. THE surface of mars may not have changed very much since Nasa sent the Viking spacecraft 45 years ago, but our ability to probe it has considerably improved, as has our understanding. Following the Viking missions, it was believed that mars was a lifeless world, devoid of even the simplest organism. Since then, however, our understanding has progressed. We have found deposits of water ice, together with evidence there was open water on the surface in times past. There is a possibility that life may have evolved on mars, only to move underground as surface conditions worsened. Perseverance has the capability to look for evidence. Deserts on earth harbour considerable life if you know where to look for it, so perhaps the same applies to mars. Bodies of liquid water have been discovered on europa, one of Jupiter’s moons; enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons; and even Pluto. Bodies of liquid that is not water have been discovered on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Finding life, past or present, on a second body in the solar system would increase the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Sending Perseverance to mars can only broaden our understanding of the universe in which we live.