2025-09-18
38 分钟The Economist. On September 10th, Sean Duffy,
NASA's acting administrator, caught the world's attention with a startling announcement.
Life on Mars is a question that astronomers, and well, even non-astronomers,
have wondered about for as long as people have known about the Red Planet.
It's a possibility so profound that,
well before any space agencies had sent any probes to the Red Planet,
people had been gathering evidence that Martians of some sort lived on the planet's surface.
In the early 20th century, That meant lines on the surface of Mars being interpreted as canals.
In the 1970s,
NASA's Viking landers carried out experiments that suggested biological reactions were taking place.
Unfortunately, none of these eventually proved to be real signs of life.
That hasn't stopped planetary scientists from continuing the search though.
NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021,
is the latest machine to be used in that search.
The rover has been trundling around Mars for four and a half years,
prodding and drilling into Martian rocks, even firing lasers at them.
To learn all about the planet's history, and its potential for hosting life.
Perseverance has also sent back the first ever audio recordings made on Mars.
It was
while the rover was exploring an ancient river valley that it ended up seeing some unusual spotty patterns on some Martian rocks.