Scientists who next year will be searching for
signs of ancient life on Mars using NASA's Curiosity rover (a.k.a. Mars Science Laboratory) are huddling today near the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, trying to decide where to land their rover.
«Some parts of Boulby mine are similar to environments we see on Mars, and so we'd like to use Boulby to work out where the best places are to look
for signs of ancient life on Mars,» says Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist from Edinburgh University, who heads up the Mars Analogues for Space Exploration project.
The 2020 mission builds on the successes of prior rovers, to make coordinated measurements that could
detect signs of ancient life — or biosignatures — in their original spatial context.
Mounting a serious search for water and
signs of ancient life demands probes that can fan out over vast areas, both above and below ground, and poke into nooks and crannies.
In 2020, both the NASA Mars 2020 rover and the ExoMars rover will set out for the Red Planet in search
of signs of ancient life.
The findings may shed light on the environmental conditions at the time of impact and may also be a good starting point to
find signs of ancient life on Mars.
It will be attached to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover, a wheeled robot that aims to determine the habitability of the Martian environment, search
for signs of ancient life, and assess natural resources and hazards for future human explorers.