New Delhi, Jan 13: For over a century, people world over had been intrigued by possibility of life on Mars and science fiction writers and astronomers added to their curiosity. The back-to-back missions to the Red Planet – European Space Agency`s first attempt in the Beagle 2 and Nasa`s Rovers Spirit and opportunity, have once again turned the world attention on probing such a possibility.
Of the nearly three dozen expeditions to Mars, over two-third have failed in their quest to win over the Red Planet, the latest to join the list of failures being Beagle 2.
The successful landing of Nasa`s spacecraft to Mars and the subsequent pictures of the Martian landscape sent back to the Earth by Rover Spirit have generated quite an excitement among the scientists and the common man alike.
"We aim to look for water. If you find it there, the chances of life on Mars brighten considerably," Amitabha Ghosh, planetary geologist with Nasa told reporters.
Ghosh, however offers a word of caution.
"It`s too early to say anything. Once we get a detailed analysis from the spectrometers aboard the spacecraft things will be clearer," he says.
The speculation of life on the Red Planet has its moorings in the late 19th century when Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli first mapped the Martian landscape using a telescope.
Bureau Report