Martian invasion

We have always been imaginatively concerned with a Martian invasion, but in just six days time, our own invasion of Mars takes place.

It is an extraordinary endeavour. We are sending a vehicle to explore the Martian surface, the most complex vehicle ever sent into space.

It is a roving laboratory that is intended to ascertain whether conditions have ever been suitable for organic life to have existed.

It seems that it has been accepted that if life ever existed, that the general conditions as they prevail, would make it highly unlikely for life to be able to exist to day.

Temperatures seem to be consistently around -150° centigrade, and solar radiation make conditions particularly inhospitable.

Once again, the team of scientists working on this extraordinary project have been looking at some of the most extreme environments on Earth to assess the possibility of life existing, or having existed, on Mars.

The Rio Tinto was used as a particular example, where water is a deep red because of Iran's, and the pH of the water is extremely acid, around 2.7.

And yet extraordinarily there is life, microscopic life, in this water and actually the cause of the acidity. metabolising what at first sight appears to be pollution from mining in the area, microscopic life forms then excrete acid, and the consequence is the extreme acid environment in which this life exists.

Curiosity, as the Mars Lander is entitled, will make its landing with extraordinary ambition to ensure that the billion-dollar craft lands safely.

A parachute will be deployed at first, using the thin Martian atmosphere to slow entry, and then a remarkable rocket powered crane will lower Curiosity to the surface.

And all of this takes place in just six days time.

It is a remarkable endeavour, and if successfully deployed, is remarkably well equipped to discover if the right kind of minerals have ever existed for organic life as we know it to perhaps have once existed.

It seems that it is already accepted that we are the only complex lifeforms that exist, and to that extent what is being sought is simply the conditions in which perhaps single cell lifeforms may once have developed.

The philosophical implications are enormous: that we may well be alone in the universe. That life exists at all on our planet seems to have been an extraordinary thing, but that it has become as complex as we see around us is all the more miraculous.

And so, no doubt this eight month journey will be more highly publicised once it is reaching its conclusion, and if successful, perhaps this question of whether other planets in our solar system may once have enabled life to be created will be answered.

The implications are extraordinary, and perhaps might make us think for a moment how special this planet is.

For it seems that space is a hostile environment, and the sun can be a most destructive force as much as it is an important source of energy for us.

That our atmosphere has not been stripped away by solar winds appears to be a function of our magnetic fields, which protect us from the worst excesses of the solar wind, and this in itself seems to be dependent on the fact that we have a molten iron core, that same phenomenon that gives us the destructive power of earthquakes.