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DRIVING QUESTIONS

  1. How is matter organized into molecules of living organisms?
  2. What is the definition of life, and how could Martian life be recognized?
  3. What is the basic structural unit of life?
  4. Why is water so important for life and living organisms?

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In-Class Activity

Click here to access Lecture ppt specifically designed for chapter 2.

Click here to access Clicker Questions specifically designed for chapter 2.

EVEN MINUTES OF TERROR.” THAT’S HOW NASA SCIENTISTS DESCRIBED the final moments of its 2012 Mars landing. In that harrowing interval, the speeding spacecraft would need to slow from about 13,200 mph to less than 2 mph as it descended blindly through the Martian atmosphere.

“Those seven minutes are the most challenging part of this entire mission,” said Pete The-isinger, project manager at NASA. “For the landing to succeed, hundreds of events will need to go right, many with split-second timing and all controlled autonomously by the spacecraft.”

The most frightening part was the last few moments of the descent, when the spacecraft would release its cargo—a 1-ton, SUV-size rover named Curiosity–down a floating “sky crane,” essentially, a trio of nylon cables suspended from a rocket-powered backpack.

The maneuver had never been attempted before, and even NASA’s own scientists had their doubts about it, dubbing it “rover on a rope.” But it worked. On August 6, 2012, at 1:32 A.M.

Curiosity is lowered to Mars down the floating sky crane.

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Relief and excitement at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when Curiosity landed safely.

Eastern Standard Time, NASA’s Mobile Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, landed successfully on the surface of the red planet.

“Touchdown confirmed,” announced NASA engineer Allen Chen. “We’re safe on Mars!”

News of the successful landing sent NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory into loud cheers as people hugged and high-fived one another. Moments later, Curiosity began sending back grainy black and white images of its landing site to a planet full of eager witnesses.

The purpose of NASA’s latest trip to Mars–the seventh to date–is to find out whether the planet could have once supported life, and might still support it. NASA calls the mission the “prospecting” stage of its search for life on Mars. What Curiosity discovers will allow scientists to begin to answer some fundamental questions, not only about life on Mars, but also about life on Earth. Questions like: How did life begin? Is there more than one type of life? Could life have arrived here on a meteorite from outer space?

These are big questions, but NASA’s new rover is nothing if not curious.