Looking for Life on Mars with the Next Generation Rover

Definitely one of the coolest symposia at AAAS was the one this afternoon devoted to the Martian rovers — past, present, and future. On the panel were NASA's Richard Cook, who helped design Spirit and Opportunity as well as the next Martian rover; Steven Squyres, a Cornell geologist who has been working with Spirit and Opportunity to get as many geological samples as he can while the rovers survive; and Andrew Knoll, a Harvard planetologist who has studied the evidence for Martian water extensively (including whether it could support life as we know it). I've got highlights from the panel below, plus a giant gallery of pictures of a life-sized model of the new rover, the Mars Science Lab Rover (MSL), which will be blasting off late next year and landing on the red planet in 2010. More »