CBG - Pathfinder Mission, suche nach Leben auf dem Mars

Excerpt from an article published by the american news agency ABCnews :

Search for Life
on the Red Planet
Highbridge Audio Recommendation

Voyage to Mars : Mankind's Search for Life

If
all goes according to plan, on July 4 a bargain-basement spacecraft will plunge into the thin atmosphere of Mars at 17,000 miles an hour, and then hit the brakes with the help of a parachute and retro rockets.
With its very delicate instruments protected by airbags, the pathfinder will smash into the surface so hard that it will bounce as high as a four-store-building, and finally come to a halt on the dusty Martian soil.

Question of Life Worth Millions.

Around
the world,hundreds of scientists who are participating in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Pathfinder projekt will breathlessly await the data that, to them, will be worth far more than the 171 million dollar cost of the mission.
Uppermost on their minds is the fundamental question: Is there now, or has there ever been, life on Mars.
"Pathfinder, by itself, will not answer that question", says Matthew Golombek, the project's chief scientist. But he believes Pathfinder should provide some valuable clues.
It will not be able to look for tiny fossils like those allegedly found in a meteorite from mars - the meteotite discovered in Antarctica last year led some scientists to believe primitive life one existed on the Red Planet. But it will try to determine if the conditions there were ever favorable for life.

Sunset on Mars

Water is the key

The Rover,
for example, will use several instruments to determine the chemical of rocks scattered throughout the area. Scientists hope to see evidence of the presence of liquid water over long periods of time.
"That's of course the fundamental issue in regards to wether life could have gotten on Mars at all", Golombek says. Water is the absolute, single most important fundamental requirement for life."
Water exists today on Mars, but either as a vapor or as subsurface ice. Many scientists believe that in its early days, say 3.5 billion years ago, Mars was a much warmer planet and waeter may have been everywhere.
What is unclear is wether water remained "stable", in a liquid form, for hundreds of years at a time, thus paving the way for life to form.
There's no question about it, though, that water existed on the surface of Mars for at least brief periods of time. Pathfinder will land in Ares Vallis, an area that was ravaged at one time by a flood of unthinkable proportions. "It was catastrophic," Golombek says, adding that if it had happened on Earth, "it would have been as if all the water in the Great Lakes had carved a channel down to the Gulf of Mexico in about a two-week period and left a canyon that was 60 miles wide and a mile and a half deep.''

	Search for Life on the Red Planet	Highbridge Audio Recommendation Voyage to Mars : Mankind's Search for Life
	If all goes according to plan, on July 4 a bargain-basement spacecraft will plunge into the thin atmosphere of Mars at 17,000 miles an hour, and then hit the brakes with the help of a parachute and retro rockets. With its very delicate instruments protected by airbags, the pathfinder will smash into the surface so hard that it will bounce as high as a four-store-building, and finally come to a halt on the dusty Martian soil. Question of Life Worth Millions. Around the world,hundreds of scientists who are participating in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Pathfinder projekt will breathlessly await the data that, to them, will be worth far more than the 171 million dollar cost of the mission. Uppermost on their minds is the fundamental question: Is there now, or has there ever been, life on Mars. "Pathfinder, by itself, will not answer that question", says Matthew Golombek, the project's chief scientist. But he believes Pathfinder should provide some valuable clues. It will not be able to look for tiny fossils like those allegedly found in a meteorite from mars - the meteotite discovered in Antarctica last year led some scientists to believe primitive life one existed on the Red Planet. But it will try to determine if the conditions there were ever favorable for life. Sunset on Mars Water is the key The Rover, for example, will use several instruments to determine the chemical of rocks scattered throughout the area. Scientists hope to see evidence of the presence of liquid water over long periods of time. "That's of course the fundamental issue in regards to wether life could have gotten on Mars at all", Golombek says. Water is the absolute, single most important fundamental requirement for life." Water exists today on Mars, but either as a vapor or as subsurface ice. Many scientists believe that in its early days, say 3.5 billion years ago, Mars was a much warmer planet and waeter may have been everywhere. What is unclear is wether water remained "stable", in a liquid form, for hundreds of years at a time, thus paving the way for life to form. There's no question about it, though, that water existed on the surface of Mars for at least brief periods of time. Pathfinder will land in Ares Vallis, an area that was ravaged at one time by a flood of unthinkable proportions. "It was catastrophic," Golombek says, adding that if it had happened on Earth, "it would have been as if all the water in the Great Lakes had carved a channel down to the Gulf of Mexico in about a two-week period and left a canyon that was 60 miles wide and a mile and a half deep.''