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Of course, any terraforming is still a long way off. The next few expeditions to Mars will definitely be made by machines.
NASA, are sending 2 rovers, capable of travelling over 100 meters a day in search of signs of water while the Europeans are sending the Beagle II probe. Odyssey will continue to orbit Mars to find out the extent of the ice. Is it just in the southern hemisphere, or all over the planet?
Now we are starting to explore what's going on in the north and we're seeing a very similar signal there but it's very likely we are gonna find at least as much ice in the north as we saw in the south and perhaps even more.
They also want to find out how deep the water goes, and whether there really are underground lakes present, as people now suspect. The mounting evidence for water on Mars means it's looking more and more habitable. We may be approaching an answer to the great question of whether there's other life out there in the universe.
My guess is that if you have the right ingredients, life is inevitable. But it is just a guess. We have just one example here on Earth. We don't know for sure if that's the case. And that's why I wanna go to Mars to test that guess, to turn it from a guess to a scientific fact.
My feeling is that it's likely that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, there are just so many other stars, so many other planets, it's hard for me to imagine that this is the only life forms we have is what we have here on Earth.
A hundred years ago, some astronomers believed that there were civilizations on Mars with cities and canals. They were wrong about the cities but the water is there. So maybe the life is too after all. But ultimately we may have to go there to answer the question "Are we alone in the universe?"
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