Newest Mars Rover to land on Monday Evening

Letter to the Editor

Forget the Olympics. The real event is coming Monday night starting at 10:00 pacific time when NASA lands the newest Mars rover Curiosity in a Martian crater to see if they can find evidence if Mars has, or has ever had life.

Since the time that humans have realized that Earth is a planet among that we are one of a trillion trillion planets in the universe we have wondered, are we alone in the universe? Is there life on other planets? Most scientists believe that  microbial life is probably common and intelligent life is anyone’s guess. This mission isn’t likely to find the skeletons of little green men, but if we find some kind of evidence of life on Mars it boosts the likelihood that some day when humans move out into space that there will be others to meet.

Finding life is important, not just to find it but to study it to determine how it is both like life on Earth and how it is different. Does it have DNA, and is it’s DNA like our DNA? Or is it something completely different? This will help us understand who we are and how we got here. So Monday night I’m staying up to watch and see if the new rover lands safely and starts operating on the surface of Mars.