This week, one of most talked about celebrities is not only out of this world, but is also not human. The Mars Rover Curiosity made history this week by discovering water, along with other elements, on the surface of the red planet.
In honor of these discoveries, the rover is now getting its own special on the Discovery Channel called Red Planet Rover. The special airs tonight on the Discovery Channel, December 18 at 10 p.m. EST.
In this new program, viewers get special access to never-before-seen footage of Curiosity's journey, as well as that of its scientific team, as it searches to find an answer to one of the biggest mysteries in science: did life ever exist on Mars?
Of course, the answer to the life on Mars question could be yes, especially after Curiosity's most recent discoveries. Not only has the rover found organic molecules on the red planet, but it also found water inside Martian rocks and sniffed methane in the Mars atmosphere.
The Discovery Channel special will focus mostly on the discovery of the organic molecules on the planet. Organic molecules usually contain carbon and hydrogen, the basic building blocks of life. Although we haven't yet found proof of life ever existing on Mars, these new findings make the planet more favorable for life than we ever imagined before.
"Organics are important because they can tell us about the chemical pathways by which they were formed and preserved," says Roger Summons of MIT, one of the Curiosity scientists. "In turn, this is informative about Earth-Mars differences and whether or not particular environments represented by Gale Crater sedimentary rocks were more or less favorable for accumulation of organic materials."
Now, scientists hope that other rocks on Mount Sharp, Curiosity's present location, show more diverse organic materials, hopefully confirming what we're beginning to suspect: that Mars once supported life.
"When we look at Mars, we have to wonder did life happen there as well? If so, what happened to it?" says Gentry Lee, a veteran engineer with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "If life evolved first on Mars, what's the possibility that life was knocked off of Mars and carried all the way to the planet Earth? Perhaps you and I and everything that's living on the planet Earth are Martians!"
[Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems]
