NOVA: Is There Life on Mars? Reports From The Phoenix Lander DVD

This DVD dealt with problems of finding the chemical signature of water interacting with rock on Mars. They did find the signature as well as blueberries which formed as a conglomerate inside rock cavities from some liquid having been in there. Unfortunately, they detected Perchlorate, which makes life more difficult. They also showed the difficulty of aiming the drill mechanism by remote control so it would drill into the rock. So what does this mean for a planet that lost most of its atmosphere, is too cold for liquid water most of the time, and has a spotty magnetic field? It means if Mars ever had life at all, it was billions of years ago in the form of extremophiles, which are just little bacteria which can live and move in extreme environments. And it is far fetched that we would ever find anything more advanced than that. So it would seem inadvisable to continue to send expensive robots to Mars, much less humans. Another problem is that this DVD had some of the same material as the DVD Welcome to Mars. I thought the two DVDs should not duplicate each other.

I enjoy showing this to high school environmental science class-shows science and technology in action; also, helps them think about why there IS life on Earth!