John Grotzinger of Caltech, Nasa Curiousity’s principal investigator, sparked off a worldwide guessing game when he announced Curiousity has “found something for the history books”.
But Nasa is not willing to share the discovery till December 3 or 7 and is planning an ‘unveil’ event in San Fransisco.
So, what is it? Superman’s car? Alien underwear? Swiss bank accounts?
Jokes apart, the find is believed to be organic in nature and it was made by SAM or the Sample Analysis at Mars.
The news is definitely big for the mission, which also explains this line — “This data is going to be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” said John Grotzinger.
Robot Curiosity which is almost as big as a car, carries 10 different instruments on its mission, but SAM, an instrument which contains a vast array of tools that can vaporise soil and rocks to analyse them, is the rover’s heart, taking up more than half of its science payload by weight.
If there’s life over there, it will be SAM who finds it. But why is Nasa being so quiet about it?
Some claim the discovery is so big that it has to be peer reviewed and some say, Nasa are simply trying to get well, more curiosity into the business. There are websites also saying the find is as confusing as the Higgs-Boson — huge but heavy on the mind.
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars’ huge Gale Crater on August 5 this year. In addition to analyzing soil samples, SAM also takes the measure of Red Planet air, hoping to detect methane, which is produced by many life forms here on Earth.
Going by conspiracy theories, it will be ironic if we discover life on Mars around the same time life on Earth comes to an end this year.