NASA robots may be destroying signs of life on Mars

September 9th, 2009 LONDON - In a new report, a panel of experts have suggested that humans could orbit Mars in the 2020s, provided NASA's budget is boosted. According to an article in the New Scientist, at its current funding level, the agency will be unable to leave low-Earth orbit for at least the next two decades, according to a summary of the panel's report.

August 29th, 2009 LONDON - A new analysis has suggested that a rock found on Mars in 1996, which was claimed by scientists to host life, has minerals which could have only been formed in a habitable environment. Researchers led by David McKay of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, caused a sensation 13 years ago when they proposed that a chunk of Mars rock found in Antarctica, called ALH 84001, contained possible signs of past life on the Red Planet, including complex carbon-based molecules and some microscopic objects shaped like bacteria.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - NASA is planning to test inflatable shells for spacecraft traveling to Mars in the future, so as to ensure safe landings on the Red Planet. Before NASA's Mars Science Laboratory alights on the red planet in 2012, the one-tonne rover will have fallen through Mars' thin atmosphere at hypersonic speeds and blistering temperatures.

August 6th, 2009 LONDON - Computer experts say robots being developed by various militaries the world over could turn on their inventors and murder millions of people. Scientists fear that these Terminator-like self-thinking, attack resistant and heavily armed robots could not only attack humans but also help terrorists to penetrate into the army by hacking.

August 5th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists have solved the mystery of the rocky Mars "monolith" that resembled the black monolith from Stanley Kubrick's movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", and have determined that it is just a broken boulder. When a high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the monolith last July, speculation was rife that it appeared to show evidence there was once life on the Red Planet.

July 20th, 2009 LONDON - Captain Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon, says that it's time of the U.S. to forget about going back, and to join forces with the international community to focus on a mission to Mars instead.

July 4th, 2009 LONDON - The NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin has said that humans should create a settlement on Mars to provide much-needed objectives to the younger generation. Aldrin, the second man to set his foot on the Moon, has claimed that setting up habitation on the surface of the red planet is a "wonderful objective" for humanity.

May 21st, 2009 LONDON - A new study has suggested that a cold, wet Mars may have been just as hospitable to life as a warm one. According to a report in New Scientist, the study investigated what would happen to various mineral solutions on Mars.

May 14th, 2009 LONDON - A new report by the US National Research Council has said that if NASA aims to bring Mars samples back to Earth, it should prepare for the possibility that the samples could include organisms that might endanger humans and other terrestrial life. According to a report in New Scientist, the report argues that to prevent potential contamination by any Martian life, NASA should begin building a secure facility on Earth to house the samples.

May 1st, 2009 LONDON - UFO experts have spotted what they claim is an alien skull on Mars. The claims were made after NASA beamed back satellite images from the planet.

April 30th, 2009 LONDON - NASA's acting administrator, Chris Scolese, has told lawmakers that the agency will probably not build an outpost on the moon as originally planned. According to a report in New Scientist, Scolese's comments also hinted that the agency is open to putting more emphasis on human missions to destinations like Mars or a near-Earth asteroid.

April 22nd, 2009 LONDON - There is extraterrestrial life and it is being concealed by the United States government, claims ex-NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell.itchell made the claims at the fifth annual X-Conference - a meeting of those who believe in UFOs and other life forms. Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, said that alien life does exist but the truth is being covered up by the U.S.

March 28th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists have reported the discovery of a methane-producing mineral on Mars. According to a report in Nature News, the evidence for the existence of the mineral, known as serpentine, was found by Bethany Ehlmann, a PhD student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

March 21st, 2009 LONDON - Using images from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, NASA scientists have discovered what could be mud volcanoes on the planet, in which life might be bubbling in muddy squirts. According to a report in New Scientist, Dorothy Oehler and Carlton Allen of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, identified dozens of mounds at a site in the northern plains of Mars that bear a striking resemblance to mud volcanoes on Earth.

March 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A group of scientists who worked on the Phoenix Mars lander last year say they have found evidence of liquid salt water on the red planet. An analysis of photographs from the lander that explored Mars for six months shows drops of what could be salty, liquid water on the legs of the lander.