Dan Broadbent
NASA has announced that it found something on Mars. What is it? Well… they’re going to tell us about it tomorrow. In a statement, NASA said:
The media and public are invited to ask questions during a live discussion at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, June 7, on new science results from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover.
On their website, NASA has titled it “New Science Results from Mars Curiosity Rover” … A typical non-descriptive title.
Get our official Skeptical Kitten shirt – Rainbow Academicat!
There has been speculation that it could pertain to methane detection at Gale crater, but we won’t know for sure until tomorrow afternoon. Finding a source of methane on Mars is incredibly exciting, because it means that there might be life on Mars creating the methane (or still exciting, but less so: geological processes releasing methane).
The scientists that will be at the meeting are:
– Paul Mahaffy, director of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
– Jen Eigenbrode, research scientist at Goddard
– Chris Webster, senior research fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
– Ashwin Vasavada, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist, JPL
You’ll be able to watch the event live tomorrow at 2pm Eastern at NASA.gov/live!
The Curiosity Rover has been trekking across Mars since it landed in August 2012. It is currently climbing a 3-mile high mountain (Mount Sharp) on Mars, which is in the center of Gale Crater. Curiosity is traveling at a blistering pace of about 0.08699 miles per hour. This would be about 2 miles a day, if Curiosity could move nonstop!
