NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover
has been on the Red Planet for a long, long time. Back in March it tallied its
2,000th Martian day, which is 2,054 Earth days, and despite some drilling woes
that have since been solved, the plucky little rover is still cruising along
and conducting experiments in the name of science.
Now, just days after NASA
revealed that its new drilling technique works as planned, the agency is
calling for a press conference to reveal something special. As always, the
group is tight-lipped about what it has in store, but it will be holding its
event this coming Thursday, June 7th, to talk all about it.
“The media and public are
invited to ask questions during a live discussion at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, June
7, on new science results from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover,” NASA said in a
statement announcing the press conference. “The results are embargoed by the
journal Science until then.”
The event will be streamed
on NASA’s YouTube page. So, put simply, we don’t know exactly what is going on,
but it’s somehow related to Mars and more specifically the aging Curiosity
rover.
Per usual, NASA has a lineup
of scientists ready to tackle questions regarding the news:
Paul Mahaffy, director of
the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Maryland
Jen Eigenbrode, research
scientist at Goddard
Chris Webster, senior
research fellow, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Ashwin Vasavada, Mars
Science Laboratory project scientist, JPL
Past NASA media conferences
have revealed news regarding the evidence of water on Mars and the discovery of
new, potentially habitable exoplanets lurking near to our Solar System. NASA
definitely didn’t find an underground Martian civilization or anything like
that, so don’t get your hopes up that we’ve made first contact, but these
scientists don’t call a press conference on a whim so whatever they have to
tell us is probably pretty interesting.
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