NASA Searches for Ancient Aliens on Mars

#MarsPerseverance #NASA #Aliens
NASA Searches for Ancient Aliens on Mars
It’s time for NASA’s next robotic explorer – Perseverance – to follow in the dusty tracks of its predecessors. After a 293 million-mile trek across space, the upgraded rover is slated to land on the red planet at 3:55 p.m. Eastern Thursday.
Its target: Jezero Crater, a harsh surface feature that was likely once a deep lake fed by rivers of running water.
“Perseverance is our robotic astrobiologist, and it will be the first rover NASA has sent to Mars with the explicit goal of searching for signs of ancient life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
But before it can begin roving its targeted landing site at a neck-breaking 0.1 mph, Perseverance has to pull off a series of risky landing maneuvers all by itself.

On the surface, Mars presents itself as a world on the verge of inhospitality.
Average temperatures that hover around negative 81 degrees. A thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere sometimes rendered opaque by planet-wide dust storms that can even be seen from Earth. Gravity that’s just one-third of what humans have evolved to tolerate.
But the red planet’s features tell a different story.
Looking at photos captured by satellites in orbit, it doesn’t take much imagining to see Mars was likely once home to rivers of running water and enormous crater-lakes. With the right conditions, perhaps this planet that gets its rusty color from iron oxide-rich rocks could once have been suitable for life – or at least life as we know it.
This dichotomy has left experts asking one of the most difficult-to-answer questions in science today: What happened to Mars, and can the same thing happen here on Earth?
“We know that Mars had a bad past,” said Zurbuchen, “We used our Spirit and Opportunity rovers (2003) to follow the water in search of answers as to why this once ocean world is now dry and desolate. Following those missions came our Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 and is still operating.”
Sixteen engineering and science cameras support safe navigation and help observe the surface from extreme closeups to far away. Some of these are part of larger scientific systems, like an ultraviolet spectrometer and another that uses X-rays.
A seven-foot arm attached to the front of Perseverance includes a powerful drill that can pull core samples from rocks that interest scientists. The samples can then be sealed and stored in tubes inside the rover’s main body for more analysis later.
Perseverance also has the capability to remove the stored samples and leave them in designated spots around Jezero Crater. A future mission – yet to be scheduled – could one day land on the red planet, pick up the tubes, then fly off to return them to scientists on Earth.
Unlike older Mars rovers, Perseverance and its Curiosity sibling rely on nuclear power. Essentially a “nuclear battery,” both rovers use energy generated by the decay of plutonium to charge onboard lithium batteries during dormancy. While the Department of Energy-provided hardware can power Perseverance for up to 14 years, the rover’s mission is currently set to last at least one Martian year (two Earth years).
Perseverance even has a friend hitching a ride for this mission: Ingenuity. This four-pound drone will host the first-ever flight on another planet during a roughly month-long window. Though it has no science hardware, two cameras will help steer the drone and teach NASA engineers how to fly on a world with an atmosphere just 1% as dense as Earth’s.
NASA is inviting the public to take part in virtual activities and events as the agency’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover nears entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet, with touchdown scheduled for approximately 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 18.
Live coverage and landing commentary from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will begin at 2:15 p.m. on the NASA TV Public Channel and the agency’s website, as well as the NASA App, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion, and THETA.TV.
Personally, I’d love to see NASA confirm what I’ve thought all along, that Mars was once home to a flourishing civilization. We’ve seen enough photos of Mars to determine that at least something or someone has been there at some time, the evidence is quite clear in a lot of the pictures sent back to earth.
The trouble is, if they DO find evidence, will they even tell us about it in the first place?
I have my doubts.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to ask yourselves –
Who is Really Lying to Us?