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#1 2012-08-17 01:22:10
- Rxke
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- From: Belgium
- Registered: 2003-11-03
- Posts: 3,669
Q&A with the engineers and scientists currently working with Curiosity
http://nl.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yb … _the_mars/
We're a group of engineers from landing night, plus team members (scientists and engineers) working on surface operations. Here's the list of participants:
Bobak Ferdowsi aka “Mohawk Guy” - Flight Director
Steve Collins aka “Hippy NASA Guy” - Cruise Attitude Control/System engineer
Aaron Stehura - EDL Systems Engineer
Jonny Grinblat aka “Pre-celebration Guy” - Avionics System Engineer
Brian Schratz - EDL telecommunications lead
Keri Bean - Mastcam uplink lead/environmental science theme group lead
Rob Zimmerman - Power/Pyro Systems Engineer
Steve Sell - Deputy Operations Lead for EDL
Scott McCloskey - Turret Rover Planner
Magdy Bareh - Fault Protection
Eric Blood - Surface systems
Beth Dewell - Surface tactical uplinking
@MarsCuriosity Twitter Team
some nice stuff, some interesting links.
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#2 2012-10-20 03:39:35
- falkor
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- From: Surrey
- Registered: 2004-08-21
- Posts: 112
Re: Q&A with the engineers and scientists currently working with Curiosity
looks like a forum designed in 1994 
nice to see their names and the remark "ASK US ANYTHING" though 
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#3 2026-04-25 16:57:04
- tahanson43206
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- Registered: 2018-04-27
- Posts: 24,495
Re: Q&A with the engineers and scientists currently working with Curiosity
Here is an update on the Curiosity Rover findings. No surprises. The research has continued since 2012.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/24/science/ … cules-mars
(th)
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#4 2026-04-26 11:29:50
- GW Johnson
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- From: McGregor, Texas USA
- Registered: 2011-12-04
- Posts: 6,205
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Re: Q&A with the engineers and scientists currently working with Curiosity
I have been expecting a finding like this for several years. Ever since the Viking results were "explained away", and the Allan Hills meteorite ALH-8001 claimed microbe fossils were "explained away".
We now think we know more about the gross climate history on Mars than we did then. The thinking now is that Mars pretty well lost a thick atmosphere to solar wind and coronal mass ejection erosion around 3 billion years ago, which would be about 1.6 billion years since formation. That would be due to the lack of a shielding magnetic field. Before that loss it was far warmer and wetter and more Earthlike, although without oxygen in its atmosphere.
Bear in mind that before around 2.5 billion years ago, some 2.1 billion years after formation, the Earth did not have any oxygen in its atmosphere, either. Oxygen was slowly put there by pre-existing life in the ocean that had "learned" how to do photosynthesis. Earth's atmosphere stayed thick, providing warmth, because Earth had an adequately strong magnetic field to greatly reduce the atmospheric stripping rate of the sun's emissions. Thicker atmosphere early-on probably balanced the dimmer young sun (according to astrophysics as we know it). Thinner atmosphere in more recent times let the climate remain hospitable as the sun brightened with age.
Estimates of when life began on Earth are still but guesses, and you must allow for the possibility that it began and was made extinct multiple times, by volcanic/tectonic phenomena far more violent early in its history. But the best guess is that life started about half a billion years after formation, or some 4.1 billion years ago. That would be single cell stuff, in the ocean, most likely.
By around 2.5 billion years ago on Earth (some 2.1 billion years after formation), there may have been multi-cellular plant life, and it appears that either single cell or multicellular plants (or both) had started oxygenating the atmosphere with photosynthesis. Whether there were any single-cell things we might call animals is unknown. But oxygenation of the atmosphere (and parts of the ocean) made multi-cellular animals, and life on land outside the ocean, possible. It took that long apparently, on Earth.
Assuming (big assumption!) that the progress of life on Mars was similar, by the time the atmosphere thinned and the ocean froze up and evaporated away at about 1.6 billion years since formation, life should still have been single-cell (and perhaps multi-cellular forms, of things that we might call "plants"). Maybe single cell "animals", maybe not. But with the exposed surface gone lethal, and the ocean drying up, any vestiges of that life would persist only underground, away from the harsh radiation, and where there was still water to support the chemistry. That may indeed still be the case today, actually! We simply do not know yet! And we will never know, until we actually go there, and dig deep looking for it.
But such a hypothesis as mine, would explain the forms seen in the Allan Hills meteorite as the microbe fossils, that they were claimed to be back then. And they might still explain the Viking results, although reactions with perchlorates would also tend to explain that finding. And that hypothesis is most certainly consistent with what Curiosity just found with its chemistry experiment.
What all that says is that it would seem unlikely that any astronauts would run across Martian life (and all the risks that might derive from it), while just fooling around on the surface. But if they drill or mine, or explore caves, that outcome might well be different!
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2026-04-26 11:56:32)
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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