NEWS: Mars Rover Lands (and takes really cool pics)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/04/mars.rovers/index.html

I was checking that out this morning. I'm really excited. I’m actually hoping they don’t find life. I’m afraid they’ll find some small organism and bring it back to Earth and mess things up. I’d love to live and see Mars colonized.

I think if they did find life that they wouldn't say anything until they had a craft built that could go and collect, because what if the Japanese or the Soviets had a craft ready to go, just waiting for word of life? The U.S. wouldn't be first to sample it, and we can't have that.

true.
Wasn't it pretty much proven they actually had some kind of evidence of life from that rock though?

I think that’s a good point. I don’t really see NASA not building a retrieval craft already though. I think if anyone’s ready to launch and bring back life we’re probably more ready than anyone. We also now have the experience actually landing on Mars that the Soviets and Japanese don’t have.

Isn’t the whole space community kind of united anyways? I’m not talking about spy satellites and all the secret military stuff. I dunno, from what I’ve read everyone has a piece of the space station and is involved with all the research on board in some way.

They are not looking for signs of life on this mission. Their only goal is to find evidence of water. If they find that they will send another mission to look for life as this one is not equipped to perform that task.

I think I got Nasa landers and the British lander mixed up.

Its good to see that this one didnt crash land and waste tons of money like the last one did. :p

That crashed because they didn't know whether they were using metric or crazy American measurments. I did hear speculations that this one would get destroyed like the others, by aliens living on the surface. Spooooky. -.-