There is Life on Mars?
- 1 Bucharest Polytechnic University, Romania
- 2 Second University of Naples, Italy
- 3 Florida Institute of Technology, United States
- 4 North Carolina A and T State University, United States
Abstract
If you can live on Mars, or if there was life on this planet, it's a natural question. The population of our planet has far outstripped the boundaries from which the planet begins to overcrow. Global resources are decreasing, while their consumption is rising more and more. The world's population is growing, it needs housing, food, water, air, clothes, transport, energy and the possibilities offered by our planet are getting smaller. Because we have long been behind the "conquering space" chapter, we are now seriously thinking about limiting the existing resources for the current and future population and those who are looking for extensions on water or in desert areas. In order to conquer the cosmic space with the current technologies, it is necessary a very large financial, sustained financial effort, but unfortunately, it is not at the level of necessity. Under these circumstances, it is natural to wonder whether there is a possibility of living on Mars, which is a subject of particular interest for astrobiology due to the proximity of the planet and its similarities to the Earth. So far, no concrete evidence of past or present life has been found on Mars, but the evidence now shows clearly that during the Noachian Ancient Period, Mars' surface environment had liquid water and could be useful to microorganisms. Surely the existence of living conditions does not necessarily imply the presence of life. ExoMars (Mars Exobiology) is a two-part astrobiology project to look for Martian life proofs, a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Rosice Rosice Space Agency. The first part of the project, launched in 2016, placed a research and communication satellite on Marte's orbit and launched a stationary experimental landing vehicle (which collapsed). The second part of the project is planned for 2020 when a rover will be launched and landed on the surface of Mars, sustaining a scientific mission that is expected to last until 2022 or even later. The major goals of ExoMars programs are to look for previous life signs on Mars, to investigate how martian waters and geochemical environments, atmospheric gas studies and their sources vary. It will search for old biosigns in Martian life, using several elements of spacecraft that will be sent to Mars in two launches. ExoMars Trace Gas Examiners (TGO) and a stationary testator named Schiaparelli were launched on March 14, 2016. TGO entered Mars orbit on October 19, 2016 and will continue to capture methane (CH 4) and other gas pathways present in the Martian Atmosphere that could be a proof of possible biological or geological activity.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajeassp.2018.78.91
Copyright: © 2018 Relly Victoria Virgil Petrescu, Raffaella Aversa, Antonio Apicella, Samuel Kozaitis, Taher Abu-Lebdeh and Florian Ion Tiberiu Petrescu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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Keywords
- Live on Mars
- Martian Atmosphere
- Existing Resources
- Space Agency
- ExoMars Programs
- Biosigns in Martian Life
- Atmospheric Gas
- European Space Agency (ESA)