April 24, 2012
April 19, 2012
NASA administrator: To Mars!
CBS News
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden says it's the "beginning of a new era" for NASA, now that the Shuttle program has ended and the massive craft are making their ways to museums. But nonetheless, he was "very emotional" watching Space Shuttle Discovery make its last flight yesterday to its permanent home at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center. Bolden had "good times in Discovery" when he piloted two of its 39 missions -- one that put the Hubble Space Telescope in order and the other the first with a crew that included a Russian cosmonaut. NASA's been in the business of "taking science fiction and turning it into science fact" for over 60 years, and Bolden says that's going to continue. The next destination? Mars. Bolden is confident "we're going to go farther than the moon," in the pursuit of putting humans "in the Martian environment by 2030."
April 12, 2012
Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life'
Discovery News
New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week. Further, NASA doesn't need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News. "The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope -- watch the bacteria move," Miller said. "On the basis of what we've done so far, I'd say I'm 99 percent sure there's life there," he added.



