Other life elsewhere?

This is the question that's on everyone's mind. Right at this moment, the Phoenix Lander is scooping up ice from the Mars polar region. It's from that ice, scientists will determine if Mars was once life sustaining, and if so, could it harness life itself?

The image above is one of my favorite images taken by the Space Telescope Hubble. Just the vastness of space is unimaginable. This image was taken back in 1995 and 1998 (it's a composite of two separate images). The Hubble's shutter was held open for 1 million seconds; long enough time to let even the faintest of light hit its lens. It's estimated to hold around 10,000 galaxies in this small slice of space alone. If you attempted to view the same spot from earth, even with a powerful scope, this portion of space would be mainly black. Because Hubble doesn't have the atmospheric disturbances that we have here on earth, it can surprise us with images such as this. And more so, from earth, this portion of space would only encompass an area roughly 1/10th the size of the moon! This is like a grain of sand from all the sand on the earth.

Personally, I totally believe that the possibility exists for life elsewhere in space. It's gotta be like winning the lottery? There has to be a 1 in 100 billion chance. I find the Phoenix mission very exciting, and hope that we learn a good deal from this endeavor. Who knows... maybe we will be making some new friends as well!

I'm on Mars...

NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed in the northern polar region of Mars this past Sunday. I was channel surfing at the time, and just by happenstance tuned into the Sci-Fi channel and saw it live from the mission control. This stuff interests me tremendously. We have so much we can learn from our Solar System. Learning is a big part of our human race.

My name — along with a quarter million others from around the world — is now on the surface of Mars. Also on the disk is Visions of Mars, a treasure trove of literature and art — from classic works by Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury to Orson Welles' radio retelling of "The War of the Worlds" to a special audio recording of Carl Sagan delivering a message to the future.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will investigate a site in the far north of Mars. The mission will seek to answer questions about that part of Mars and help resolve broader questions about the planet. The key questions Phoenix will address concern water and conditions that could support life.

The Phoenix landing region has water ice in soil close to the surface, which NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter discovered for much of the high-latitude terrain in both the north and south hemispheres of Mars.

Phoenix will dig down to the icy layer. It will examine soil in place at the surface, at the icy layer and in between. It will scoop up samples for analysis by its onboard instruments. One key instrument will check for water and carbon-containing compounds by heating soil samples in tiny ovens and examining the vapors that are given off. Another will test soil samples by adding water and analyzing the dissolution products. Cameras and microscopes will provide information on scales spanning eight powers of 10, from features that could fit by the hundreds into the period at the end of this sentence to a survey of the landscape by a mast-mounted camera. A weather station will provide information about atmospheric processes in an arctic region where a coating of carbon-dioxide ice comes and goes with the seasons.

*Image and portions reproduced by Permission following NASA copyright guidelines.