Where should NASA down its next rover on Mars ? You ’d probably require that determination to be made by scientist and engineers with decades of experience behind them , locating destinations that could be our best wager for finding preindication of retiring life on Mars .
But one of the frontrunners for the landing site for the 2020 Mars rover ( it ’s yet to be given a stately name ) does not have such an origin . Instead , it was project by high school educatee Alex Longo in 2014 , who was just 14 years old at the time . The story was recentlypicked up by NPR – and it ’s an interesting one to say the least .
" I saw that they were await for abstract from scientists to hint landing place sites , " Longo , a student at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh , North Carolina , told NPR . " I settle , well , I ’ll write something up . "
Longo ’s idea was tosend the rover backto where NASA ’s Spirit rover landed in 2004 , a region called Columbia Hills located in the Gusev Crater . It might seem somewhat odd explore a realm we ’ve been to before , but thanks to Spirit we know this location has many of the thing we ’re look for in this next mission – including a robust history of rocks and evidence of hydrothermal body process , which could be link to biosignatures .
Spirit ( creative person ’s picture show ) was operational on Mars for about six days . NASA / JPL / Cornell University , Maas Digital LLC
The mission would also allow this new rover to happen and image Spirit , which got stay put on the surface and became defunct in 2010 . read Spirit could show us how our machinery copes when forget uncover to the Martian surroundings with no protection , which may test priceless when preparing human missions to Mars .
“ Perhaps the question is not ‘ Why pass to the Columbia Hills ? ’ but ‘ Why not ? ’ ” Longo said in anarticle for The Planetary Societylast class .
NASA loved his idea so much that Longo was asked to stage it at a landing site workshop in Texas in October 2015 . It twist out to be a rather pop suggestion ; Longo ’s proposalwas secondonly to another site , a dry ancient lake in theJezero Crater , in its rating on various criteria . Longo is now working on it alongside other scientists who desire to hark back to Spirit ’s location .
The landing place website has still yet to be determine , with a short list of eight location include Gusev and Jezero currently being considered . Another workshop be after for February 2017 will narrow this down to four candidates . But when it is nailed down , perhaps we ’ll have a now 16 - year - one-time student to give thanks .
