Word: martian
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...government also doesn’t understand the reason that people follow manned spaceflight. Yes, there’s a childish glee in imagining Americans sifting Martian soil through their gloved fingertips. But people gravitate back to the manned space program because they see it as mankind’s cosmic destiny, not a way of proving American dominance here on Earth. Human space exploration has enormous potential to unite the people of the world in a project of mutual benefit...
Perched atop Dr. Manhattan’s Martian crystalline palace, “Watchmen” hero Laurie Jupiter gazes deeply into his white eyes. She pleads desperately for him to prevent the Earth’s impending nuclear destruction but Manhattan continues to stoically admire the surrounding landscape. His reticence is motivated by the saddening knowledge that the beauty of the universe is independent of human existence. This philosophical scene in the 2009 film adaptation of Alan Moore’s 1980s graphic novel—bereft of flashy slow motion action or stereotypical “KA-POW?...
Even though Phoenix was assembled in a special clean room to minimize bacterial contamination, and its arm, which would have direct contact with Martian ice, was heat-sterilized before launch, it's likely that dozens or more species of microbes hitched a ride on Phoenix's 10-month trip to Mars. Once on Mars, it's possible that bacteria shielded by the structure of the spacecraft from the harsh Martian UV radiation could stay alive, in dormancy, for hundreds of thousands of years. And if native microbes do exist on Mars - nothing has been found yet, but scientists hold...
...away our footprints and remove any possibility of contamination, by leaving behind nothing that could foster alien microbial growth. Such a policy would be especially necessary if we discover that life on Mars has emerged independently of life on Earth - what McKay calls a "second genesis" - as opposed to Martian life that arose through the exchange of meteorites between Mars and a hospitable Earth, a condition in which the two planets would share a tree of life and contamination would be less of a concern. If there really were a second genesis on Mars, "contamination by even one Earth bacterium...
...time Opportunity arrives, Spirit may be gone. The caprice of the Martian winds has done a better job of clearing Opportunity's solar panels than Spirit's, and project manager John Callas says that although both rovers survived the past Martian winter, in Spirit's case, it was a "squeaker." The winter that will come later in 2009 could easily be its last. Of course, the same was true of the winters that came and went from 2004 to 2008. Both machines clearly inherited long life from their Sojourner granddaddy, and both seem equally determined to make the most...