Wednesday, May 23, 2012

NASA Rover takes pictures of landscape on Mars

There are still many mysteries surrounding our neighbour planet, Mars. Until this day it remains unknown whether there were life forms on the planet, and NASA is still investigating its potential to harbour organisms. That is why the space organisation deployed their Mars Rovers, basically little autonomous cars, to drive around the Martian surface, enabling us to study it. A while ago, NASA launched an all-new Rover to search for life, but an older model just snapped a beautiful picture of the Martian landscape, which appears to be taken on a sunny afternoon.

Opportunity
NASA's Opportunity Rover took the picture, giving a view eastward of the so-called Endeavour crater. Taken between 16:30 and 17:00, the Sun, the same one that warms our Earth, is illuminating what seems to be a desert. The whole scene looks awfully familiar to certain areas on our planet, which makes it a very interesting picture, even though NASA admits the colours are not entirely natural: according to the space organisation, this helps to distinguish between different materials found across the Endeavour crater.
Life
Of course, bringing back home pictures of the Martian landscape is quite pleasant for us viewers, but the Rovers have an even more important task. In the coming years, we will likely find out whether Mars has ever been a host for life, and we will ask ourselves the question whether the Red Planet will ever be suitable for life forms such as ourselves. Scientists have already found proof for the hypothesis that life is possible on Mars.

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