Three and a half billion years ago, waves splashed and currents descended over this dusty firmament on Mars, now known as Jezero Crater. On an emerging earth, chemistry has solidified into the elevated state we call life.
Astronomers, philosophers and science fiction writers have long wondered whether nature conducted the same experiment there as on earth. Was Mars another test tube for Darwinist evolution? You will no longer be laughed at from the biology class because you speculate that life actually first evolved on Mars and drifted to Earth on a meteorite, or that both planets were sown with microbes or proto-life from somewhere even further. .
Humans have thus sent their offspring through time and 300 million miles of space in search of long-lost family members, ancient roots of a pedigree that can be traced in the soil of the Red Planet.
The Perseverance rover and its brother, the Ingenuity helicopter, ended up in a cloud of gravel on February 18, teeming with antennas and cameras. Perseverance will spend the next March year, which is equivalent to two Earths, stabbing and collecting rocks from the Jezero crater and the river delta that penetrates it. The wanderer will chemically and geologically examine the debris and take photographs so that scientists on earth can look for any signs of ancient fossilization or other patterns that living organisms would yield.
Perseverance and ingenuity work on very long leashes: 12 minutes of light travel time – and signal delay – across the aisle of Pasadena, where their creators and tenders wait to see what they have achieved in recent times. Just like teenagers you leave with the car keys at the door, perseverance and ingenuity are no more intelligent and responsible than people trained them to be.
These rocks are picked up and returned to Earth in five-year series of maneuvers that start relay rockets, swings and orbital transmissions, starting in 2026, which will make recycling the moon rocks as easy as sending holiday cookies to your family. The rocks that return from 2031 will, for years, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, be scrutinized for what they can say about the hidden history of our lost twins and perhaps the earliest days of life in the Solar System.
The generation that followed World War II carried out the first major exploration of the solar system. It may be the destiny of this generation to carry out the next great exploration, to discover whether we have or ever had neighbors in these worlds. In the Jezero crater, the dream lives on. We may never live on Mars, but our machines already do.