Traces of unusual methane emissions on the Martian atmosphere are raising hopes of finding living aliens
By Michael Taylor
NASA has predicted that extraterrestrial life in its microbial form will be discovered on Mars in 2021.
What if this proves to be the case?
On February 18, 2021, NASA landed its Perseverance Rover on Mars to find signs of ancient extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet. Mars may have been once home to a healthy water system on its surface, which means life could have easily survived and evolved.
So, what if NASA finds living aliens on Mars?
Traces of unusual methane emissions on the Martian atmosphere have raised hopes of finding living aliens, at least in their microbial forms on Mars. NASA’s current mission to the Red Planet will reveal if such a possibility exists.
Most likely, it will.
However, the 2.7 billion-dollar-question that remains unanswered is: Are we humans prepared to accept the realities surrounding extraterrestrial existence?
I don’t think we are ready for such a revolutionary new line of thinking yet. However, we are close to finding extraterrestrial life, and we may hear some ground-breaking and mind-puzzling announcements soon. Hence, it would be wise for us humans to get accustomed to accepting the hidden truth.
If microbial alien life gets discovered on Mars, the Red Plant may harbor advanced life forms in the future. That’s if we don’t contaminate the planet first, like we did to Earth, and terminate existing alien life forms on Mars before we even begin.
Within the coming few weeks or months, we should expect to start hearing a series of conspiracy theories about alien life on Mars. Most of them will advocate that advanced extraterrestrials exist on the Red Planet. We might even be told that countries such as the United States, Russia, and China have already been working closely with aliens on Mars, and perhaps elsewhere.
It has even been recently suggested that existing CIA documents could prove the presence of giant aliens on Mars and that the UFOs that are being spotted in North of Miami’s and North Carolina’s night skies are real.
Perhaps it would be wise to dismiss all this nonsense unless you are one of the few who are fascinated by aliens and addicted to conspiracy theories and fake news.
Nevertheless, prepare yourself soon for upcoming announcements that some Earth organisms could temporarily survive on Mars and that this could have significant implications for space travel.
Such announcements are going to be hugely important as such microbes may help space travelers produce food and material supplies independently from Earth, which will be crucial when far away from home.
A couple of days ago, NASA unveiled the first video and colored images of the Perseverance landing on Mars, accompanied by the first sound recording of the Martian surface.
I was so fascinated by those images that I spent all day watching them. This is one reason why I’m sharing them with you as we speak courtesy of NASA. The images and sounds from the Red Planet’s surface can be considered as a treasure trove, especially the sounds recorded by the rover, which feature a strong gust of Martian wind and little else.
There is even a good chance that NASA may find possible evidence of rudimentary life, including signs of microbes, in ancient sediments taken from Martian rocks by Perseverance, the rover that cost taxpayers 2.7 billion dollars. The specimens would be the first collected by humans from an alien planet.
NASA’s newly-released video chronicles the final minutes of the rover’s entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet on February 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover has also provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.
From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covered the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles or 11 kilometers above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.
A microphone attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the commercial off-the-shelf device survived the highly dynamic descent to the surface and obtained sounds from Jezero Crater on February 20. About 10 seconds into the 60-second recording, a Martian breeze is audible for a few seconds, as are mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface.
NASA also released the mission’s first panorama of the rover’s landing location, taken by the two Navigation Cameras located on its mast. The six-wheeled robotic astrobiologist, which is the fifth rover the agency has landed on Mars, is currently undergoing an extensive checkout of all its systems and instruments.
This video of Perseverance’s descent is the closest thing to landing on Mars without a pressure suit.
The world’s most intimate view of the Mars landing begins about 230 seconds after the spacecraft entered the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere at 12,500 miles per hour or 20,100 kilometers per hour.
The video opens in black, with the camera lens still covered within the parachute compartment. Within less than a second, the spacecraft’s parachute deploys and transforms from a compressed 18-by-26-inch or 46-by-66-centimeter cylinder of nylon, Technora, and Kevlar into a fully inflated 70.5-foot-wide or 21.5-meter-wide canopy, the largest ever sent to Mars. The tens of thousands of pounds of force that the parachute generates in such a short period stresses both the parachute and the vehicle.
In NASA’s scientific jargon, this is referred to as the seven minutes of terror while landing on another planet.
Indeed, it is!
From the explosive opening of the parachute to the landing rockets’ plume sending dust and debris flying at touchdown, it’s unquestionably breath-taking.
The video also captures the heat shield dropping away after protecting Perseverance from scorching temperatures during its entry into the Martian atmosphere. The downward view from the rover sways gently like a pendulum as the descent stage, with Perseverance attached, hangs from the back shell and parachute.
The Martian landscape quickly pitches as the descent stage, the rover’s free-flying jetpack, which decelerates using rocket engines and then lowers the rover on cables to the surface. After breaking free, its eight thrusters engage to put distance between it and the now-discarded back shell and the parachute.
Then, 80 seconds and 7,000 feet or 2,130 meters later, the cameras capture the descent stage performing the sky crane maneuver over the landing site. The plume of its rocket engines kicks up dust and small rocks that have likely been in place for billions of years.
Watching this video is very much similar to a ride of a lifetime and landing on the surface of Mars, especially with the added sound effects by the microphone attached to the vehicle, which enhance the viewing experience.
The footage ends with Perseverance’s aluminum wheels making contact with the surface at 1.61 miles per hour or 2.6 kilometers per hour, and then pyrotechnically fired blades sever the cables connecting it to the still-hovering descent stage. The descent stage then climbs and accelerates away in the pre-planned flyaway maneuver.
The whole thing looks and feels like an old Western movie with a younger Clint Eastwood riding his horse slowly into the setting sun.
