Giant crowdfunded darts may search for life on Mars

[Dietrichw]

Source

 

 

Is there life on Mars? Curiosity didn't find any, but that's hardly a conclusive answer. In fact, a handful of NASA scientists claim that the US space agency is looking for life in all the wrong places. The Mars rover explored the red planet's dry, irradiated surface: if the planet still hosts life, it's probably several meters underground. Now a team of scientists -- including a few NASA veterans -- are hoping to fund a mission to search for life under Mars' surface. The project is called ExoLance, and its Indiegogo campaign hopes to pitch a series of high-tech darts at the red planet's crust.

 

It's time to turn our attention to the search for life on Mars," says NASA scientist Dr. Chris McKay. "Over the past few decades the missions have focused on geology. It's time to turn our attention to biology." NASA's official missions have barely drilled into the planet's surface, excavating only mere centimeters. The ExoLance team says we need to go deeper, and has designed a penetrator probe that uses the momentum of planetfall to embed itself two meters below the surface. The ExoLance probes would be distributed to multiple sites across Mars, reporting back to a host satellite that would relay their findings to the team back home.

 

Also the Crowdfunding is $250,000 for the testing of the prototypes that will be pitched to NASA for funding the launch and final versions 

[Shd0w2]

woot woot, i dont like space exploration.

[Bluejay0]

This is so simple yet could be so effective. I can see this as like part of a HUGE probing operation over sectors of Mars and maybe Jupiter's moons to see if they can maybe map the landscape and detect any form of life in the area. One satellite deploying small satellites to orbit the targets and send out small darts to scan the area for an amount of time to learn about it. THE FUTURE IS NOW

[Vacsol]

missiles which will cause the underground martians to think of this as an act of war?

great idea

 

1337^th post!

[Thorium19]

This is great! Now all we need is a giant darts board, or to send a rover up there to paint a darts board onto the surface.

[ToxicFire]

Point of fact, curiosity wasn't a mission to look for life

 

though i do like the concept.

[Spongy141]

The US should just take 50% of what they use for military spending and put into science.