This is the second episode featuring a conversation from Space on Tap, a special "Are We There Yet?" event series. It's a live, semi-scripted space-science show. This episode was taped at Ace Café Sanford on July 8.
Could life exist on another planet?
The rovers Curiosity and Perseverance roam Mars, studying the terrain and searching for signs of life.
Amy Williams is an astrobiologist at the University of Florida and a member of the rover’s science team. She explained that since Mars and Earth were at one point similar. If we were to find life on another planet, Mars would likely be a candidate.
“Mars had water at the time when we expect that life originated on Earth,” Williams said. “So, it begs the question ‘if life arose on Earth at this time with similar conditions, why not on Mars?’ Mars has become a really great testing ground for us to build new instrumentation, next-generation instruments and vehicles to help us try to address the question of whether there is life beyond Earth.”
Williams said it won’t be as easy as spotting things like green Martians -- scientists are looking for biosignatures.
The rovers look for things called crenulations, or marks in the rocks. On Earth, crenulations are some of the earliest signs of life.
“We're not going to see evidence for an individual bacterium preserved in a rock, but we might see some of the chemicals that were part of the biochemistry of that organism,” Williams said. “Those are the kinds of things that we are searching for, trying to find foundational evidence that can build to a story of potential life on Mars. We're not quite there yet, but we've had some really exciting discoveries recently that I think are starting to build an interesting story.”
However, if life is found, Williams said it would have to be explained in a way where everyone would understand, since it would change what we know about our universe.
“It's paradigm shifting, and it has implications not just for the scientific communities, but for how we experience our experience as humans, as a species on a world that we're discovering there are species beyond this world,” Williams said. “There are things I think that are outside the sphere of what science is going to be able to direct. I mean, we're not going to tell anybody how to how to feel about that discovery.”
A look back at the last Space Shuttle flight and its commander
For 30 years, NASA’s Space Shuttle program launched 135 missions, helping build the International Space Station and delivered important payloads like the Hubble Space Telescope.
Its final mission, STS-135, was in July 2011. Launching from the Kennedy Space Center, a crew of four embarked on a 12-day journey, before the Space Shuttle Atlantis’s landed just miles from where it lifted off.
The crew included four NASA astronauts: Commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley, and mission specialists Rex Walheim and Sandy Magnus.
The entire crew reunited Saturday the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida fifteen years after they launched on the Space Shuttle Atlantis’s last flight. Ferguson said Atlantis and the entire Space Shuttle program were vital in helping to advance space exploration in general.
“It’s hard to believe that we used to pack that thing full of fuel and people and stuff and stand it on its tail and strap it to a rocket and send it into space,” Ferguson said. “I mean, it was designed 40, 50 years ago [when] they started working on it and it is still a miracle of technical achievement that that ever existed.”
The day the final mission launched, Ferguson was doubtful the mission would go off; he said the crew was given a 70% no-go chance on launch day.
“It was raining, so you see water pouring all over the orbiter,” Ferguson said. “But then as we got closer, I mean within 20 minutes...things were beginning to line up. We had a very sort of a late hold, which was unusual. But then you know that all cleared up, and off we went. I was amazed.”
As far as its legacy, Ferguson said the program will be remembered for generations to come. Plus, without the Space Shuttle Missons, things like the International Space Station and some major space telescopes would not be in place today.
“It had a tremendous capability to carry not only heavy payloads but large payloads,” Ferguson said. “All the observatories, you know, Hubble and Chandra. I mean there were about a half a dozen of those. But ultimately, in the end, we were able to carry the big pieces of the space station because they were not only heavy, but they were big and assemble them all in orbit into this just incredible complex in in space.”
