Washington, June 09: NASA has warned that a new mission to find signs of life on Mars, due to blast off on Sunday, is fraught with peril.
A rocket carrying the first of two robots that will carry on the search is to lift off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday. NASA’s associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler warned 48 hours before the launch: “It’s not a trip to the beach on a Sunday afternoon.”

“This will continue NASA’s long goal of finding the water. On Earth, wherever we find water, we find life. There was water on Mars billions of years ago and maybe just a few hours ago. We have to show that water was on Mars for a long time.” He did not rule out the possibility of problems on the mission, particularly during the landings expected in early January 2004. “We can have a bad day on Mars. Wind. Bad weather.


We are trying to predict the weather on Mars for January 2004,” he explained, noting that of 30 attempts at Mars missions over the past 40 years just 12 have succeeded. The Mars Expedition Rover (MER-A) will be launched from a Boeing-made Delta II launcher.

The US MERs will be competing with a European rival to shed light on Mars’s mysteries. With the MERs, NASA is spending $800 million to get this mission right after two costly failures in 1998 and 1999.
Bureau Report