Mars Before Breakfast

When I first heard about Curiosity, my first reaction was almost disbelief.

But what seemed to be more like science fiction has become science fact.

Taking almost a year to reach its destination, a new Rover has been sent to Mars, and is now at the beginning of a two year mission to explore the surface of the planet and with the aim of discovering whether Mars may have developed life perhaps in the distant past when it had sufficient water on its surface to enable biochemical reactions such as we suppose might have occurred on our own planet, culminating in the evolution of a complex life forms.

It has perhaps been millions of years since Mars possessed an atmosphere, long since stripped away by the Solar Wind. if it had one in the first place.

Mars has always been the imaginative likely home for life in our Solar System, and has certainly fueled the imagination of writers for a couple of centuries.

And now, with the Curiosity mission, it seems likely that we will discover at least a partial answer to the question as to whether we are alone, in this part of the universe at least.

If life did once develop on our nearest neighbour, it is highly unlikely that it will have survived to the present day. This much seems to be fairly certain from what we already know of the Martian environment, blasted as it is by Solar radiation and unprotected by what we appear to take for granted on earth, magnetic poles that appear to be the reason why we have retained an atmosphere, and by so doing, retained the oceans that seem to have been universally recognized as the origin of life as we know it.

Curiosity is in effect a roving laboratory capable of examining and testing the environment into which it has been introduced, to assess whether there are any traces of what we have seen on Earth as a result of an environment that has developed over millions of years.

It has already been discovered from previous work  that deposits of gypsum can be found on Mars, and this is a mineral that on Earth developed as a consequence of standing water. The chemical composition of gypsum includes substantive amounts of calcium, and on earth this mineral is likely to have come about as a consequence of the deposit of primitive life in those ancient seas.

In some respects, the successful landing of Curiosity is one of the most remarkable scientific achievements ever to have taken place.

The fact that it has landed safely is simply remarkable.

And now, its mission over the next two years will hopefully throw some light on the question as to whether we are in fact an extraordinarily complex singularity, perhaps answering one of the most profoundly important questions for the Human Race.

I like to think that this is a purely scientific mission, but it holds extraordinarily significant questions in its mission parameters.

For if it does discover that no life has ever developed on another planet in our own Solar System, it does perhaps suggest that we may be more alone than our imagination would like to contemplate.

It would be wrong for me to suggest that any answers we may discover will throw any light on the existence of a God. This is not a scientific question at all.

Just as it is for each person to examine their conscience concerning questions of Faith, so it will be for every individual to assess any data that Curiosity may discover from its exploration of the Martian landscape.

I have already become a follower by Twitter of the Curiosity mission, and this has enabled me through a link to the NASA website to see some of the images already sent back by the roving laboratory's cameras.

Thus my title, Mars Before Breakfast. In my most recent communication from Curiosity, I spent a fascinating 20 minutes or so exploring another planet.

Not bad for someone that cannot walk, and perhaps simply another reason why everybody should have regular access to a computer with a broadband Internet link.