From Yellowstone to Mars

CU researchers help steer the quest for life on other planets

They are alive. The boiling, Caribbean-blue hellholes. The carpets of green, yellow, white, black and orange bathed in scalding runoff.

We are alive because untold trillions of microbes have lived. How the world’s microbes — the planet’s richest trove of life — survive and shape our world is the key to understanding the origins of life on Earth, scientists from the University of Colorado and elsewhere say. The $720 million Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that launched Friday is NASA’s latest bet that the same holds true elsewhere.

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A series of missions to Mars has been dedicated to finding hints of past microbial life. In November 2006, from 190 miles above our neighbor planet’s rusted deserts, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will begin an exhaustive, two-year search.

What the spacecraft really is looking for is a former Yellowstone.

By Todd Neff, Camera Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/science/article/0,1713,BDC_2432_4001646,00.html