Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Adrian C wrote:

On 06/08/2012 19:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
"Curiosity is about twice as long and five times as heavy as NASA's two
previous Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and its plutonium-powered
nuclear battery will provide the mobile laboratory with about 2.7 kWh
per day, far in excess of the 1 kWh per day maximum of the earlier
solar-powered rovers. The nuclear battery is also much longer-lasting
than the solar power systems used by the previous missions, and is
expected to last through the rover's planned operations and beyond,
providing the potential for the mission to be extended."


There's the beginings of life apparently on Mars.

What gives you that idea?

Well, they are looking for it, and apart from hopeful dreams of
finding tiny green aliens that speak english the most probable find
would be some very fragile micro organism, or nothing.

Now wind the clock forward a million years or so. We here on earth
will have probably persished, but those organisms on mars may well
develop into self sustainable alien lifeforms. Tiny, maybe green, who
knows?

What organisms? And even if there were any, how're they gonna manage
with no liquid water?

Why would they need water? because you do?

James Lovelock had the right idea when he was asked by NASA to develop a
test for life, to be incorporated into the 1976 Viking Landers. He
pointed out that a characteristic of life is to keep its environment far
from chemical equilibrium. So, Earth's atmosphere contains large amounts
of oxygen, a very reactive gas. Mars' atmos contains none, and is mostly
CO2, indicative of an atmos *in* chemical equilibrium. QED there is no
life on Mars.

The NASA engineers whose careers depended on this investigation were not
best pleased with him.