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The Phoenix lander's first taste test of soil near Mars' north pole reveals a briny environment similar to what can be found in backyards on Earth, scientists said Thursday.

The finding raises hope that the Martian arctic plains could have conditions favourable for primitive life. Phoenix landed a month ago to study the habitability of Mars' northern latitudes.

“There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly,” mission scientist Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University said of the soil. “There's nothing about it that's toxic.”

Phoenix so far has not detected organic carbon considered an essential building block of life. Last week, the lander found evidence of ice below the soil. Scientists generally agree that liquid water, a stable energy source and organic, or carbon-containing, compounds are required for a habitable zone.

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Source. I am torn; if it turns out that there's life on Mars that would be amazing and important, but it would also mean that it would be hard to justify colonizing the planet- almost inevitably, some terrestrial microbe would escape and mess things up.

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1) Who cares if we destroy the primordial life there?
2) Even if both of us care, would THAT actually be the item that shifts policy?

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On the other hand, if Mars has all the necessary nutrients but lacks actual life, we could not only colonize it, we might be able to terraform it.

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The only thing that's missing is either political will or a benevolent billionaire.

I'm reading Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars right now, apparently back in the early 1990s Bush Sr. asked NASA for a Mars mission plan. They went wild and constructed their plan around the technnology they wanted to have. A permanent space base, assembling large interplanetary spaceships in orbit, a base on the moon for refuelling, et cetera. The price tag went to US$ 450 billion and Congress killed it. Interestingly, we could have had a permanent colony on Mars by now and multiple copies of what Zubrin mockingly refers to as "Battlstar Galactica" for a quarter the cost of the Iraq war.

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Originally posted by 500_Apples:
1) Who cares if we destroy the primordial life there?

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2) Even if both of us care, would THAT actually be the item that shifts policy?

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Personally I think NASA is so conservative, and the budget situation so bad, that I'll be surprised if we have a human landing by 2050. Current plans are for 2031 (lol) but one of Obama's policy is to cut funding for the Mars program to increase funding for education (wtf).

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In any case, I think there should be higher priorities even within the realm of space exploration. Like Spaceguard, for instance.

[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]

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The Phoenix lander's first taste test of soil near Mars' north pole reveals a briny environment similar to what can be found in backyards on Earth...

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
But without crumpled-up potato chips bags... so far.

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The society that ends up being built there will of course be communist and fully sustainable in its management, and as such this issues will never manifest themselves.

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Originally posted by Agent 204:

Assuming civilization survives, we'll go... but it might not be NASA who does it. Gwynne Dyer predicted a few years back that the first person on Mars would probably be Chinese.

In any case, I think there should be higher priorities even within the realm of space exploration. Like Spaceguard, for instance.

[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]

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I just read the back contamination section in Zubrin's book, like 20 minutes ago, he argues it's nonsense because the different organisms would be adapted to different environments. He said it would be analogous to people catching lime disease and trees catching colds.

But really though I don't think it would be a huge tragedy. If life exists in two places it probably exists all over the universe, and I don't think the competition that would be imposed on martian microbes should be enough to deter us from accomplishing something that would have a profoundly transformative and positive effect on humanity.

[ 28 June 2008: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]