What’s going on with the search for life on Mars?

A flurry of Mars-related news has generated a lot of attention for the red planet and raises questions about where it all fits into what we already know.

Since June, we’ve heard about two indicators of possible life on Mars and the fate of the rover Opportunity, shrouded in one of the planet’s global dust storms. We’ve also looked back on rover Curiosity’s mission and forward to how humans may someday step foot on Mars.

“From an academic viewpoint, space has enormous ability to stimulate interest in everybody and particularly students,” says Scott Hubbard, an adjunct professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, former director of NASA Ames, and author of Exploring Mars: Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery (UA Press, 2012). “I’ve done lots of speaking at middle schools and if you talk about either dinosaurs or astronauts, the kids get excited.”

Here, Hubbard explains several of the recent headline-grabbing stories about what’s  happening, what’s next, and what it all means.

The post What’s going on with the search for life on Mars? appeared first on Futurity.