Nasa Finds Life - Its Own Mars Mission Rejuvenates Space Agency

And so, it begins: a search for life elsewhere that breathes new life into NASA.

With spectacular maneuvers including an intricate technological ballet high above Earth, the most ambitious search for life on another planet was launched Thursday.

First stop: Mars, a place now thought likely to have harbored primitive alien species in the distant past, a place that still may harbor life today.

The ultimate goal is to determine, once and for all, what - if anything - is out there.

“NASA is looking for Spock,” said John Pike, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ space policy project, a private group that monitors the space agency.

The comprehensive search began at 50 seconds past noon Thursday with blastoff of the Mars Global Surveyor, one of three exploration-on-the-cheap missions to Mars lined up for departure by Dec. 2.

At least seven U.S. probes are to follow by 2005. Russia and Japan are contributing Mars-bound spacecraft as part of the worldwide effort.

Excited by new circumstantial evidence that primitive life once thrived on the mysterious Red Planet, and may still endure there, some experts already are talking about a human mission to Mars by 2018.

“Mars Global Surveyor is not just a single launch to Mars,” said Wesley Huntress Jr., NASA’s space science chief. “It’s opening up a new era of Mars exploration.”

It’s also reawakening public interest in space exploration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration itself.

Though human expeditions to Mars are still the stuff of fantasy, many consider the robotic search for life there much more intriguing than NASA’s space shuttle, the aerospace equivalent of a tractor-trailer that carries astronauts and equipment no farther than Earth orbit.

“The Mars project is what NASA is supposed to be doing - to boldly go where no one has gone before,” Pike said. “That’s why we have a space agency.”

Scientists want to learn more about Mars’ environment and to determine conclusively whether life ever thrived there. Some believe that primitive life forms, similar to single-cell organisms on Earth, may still exist underground near hidden reserves of water.

Liftoff came exactly on schedule, a three-stage rocket hoisting the 2,337-pound spacecraft to temporary orbit 115 miles above Earth.

About 50 minutes after blastoff, the Global Surveyor separated from the rocket’s final stage, deployed its power-generating solar arrays and began its circuitous, 435 million-mile voyage to Mars.

If all goes well, the device will produce more space-age wonders as it approaches Mars next September.

To save weight, fuel and money, scientists omitted any braking device.

Instead, they are relying on the planet’s atmosphere to slow the satellite down to a stable orbit about 217 miles above Mars.

Then, it will activate its seven instruments and survey Mars’ atmosphere, climate and landscape, seeking future landing sites for more probes or human explorers.

“We want to understand how Mars has evolved relative to Earth,” Cunninghan said. “And since Mars is the most hospitable of the planets, if we have human exploration, it is the first place we’ll go.”

And after that, who knows?

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Signs of life A team of American scientists announced in August that they had found what looked like fossilized bacteria in a 4.5 billion-year-old Martian rock picked up in Antarctica. Last week, British scientists who had examined a second meteor from Mars said they had found similar signs life may have existed 600,000 years ago.