NASA's Perseverance Rover successfully lands on Mars

[SvennoJ]

Alex_The_Hedgehog said:

That's really cool!

I became interested in astronomy after I caught myself wondering how many worlds that we don't know yet are out there. Will we ever find out if we are alone in the universe? Understanding more about Mars is a good starting point to a lot of promising missions. Sadly, I think we won't live enough to see the answers to all the questions in our minds.

Play Elite Dangerous for a bit and you'll start getting a feeling for how huge our galaxy is. (with between 100 and 400 billion stars) Then realize that the milky way galaxy is just one of 125 billion in the observable universe.

The chance that we are alone is pretty much nil. However the chance to actually encounter another intelligent species might also be close to nil. It takes light 80,000 years to reach the other side of the milky way galaxy. It takes the sun 230 million years to complete one orbit around our galaxy. Who knows how many civilizations have already come and gone across the Galaxy.

Perhaps we'll find more clues that Mars once supported life. 4.2 billion years ago Mars had an atmosphere, which it slowly lost until it was gone 3.7 billion years ago. 4.2 billion years ago Earth was still a hot mess, spewing debris into space which formed the moon. Mars was probably not habitable either, so soon after the solar system formed. However evolution has its own timetable of stagnation and sudden growth spurts. I wonder what we'll find on Mars!