Since the realization that Earth is not the only planet in the system, Mars has been attracting a lot of attention. Studies have been carried out on this planet, on which scientists have been working hard, for years. The common point of these studies is “Is there life or was there life on Mars?” is happening.
NASA and the crowdsourcing platform HeroX are now working on Mars’ potential to once host life. In order to better analyze the data, NASA organizes a competition.
Data collected by spacecraft will be scanned first
‘Is there life on Mars?’ HeroX and NASA, which brings together creative ideas to better analyze the answers to the question, are organizing a competition. It is claimed that the winner of this competition will be given 30 thousand dollars.
There is a thought that Mars hosted life in terms of the presence of water on the surface in ancient times. There is no information about whether there is life or whether life lasts until modern times. Despite all this, the European Space Agency and NASA are working together for a pristine example.
Due to the limited link channel from space to earth, there is a thought to gather and extract information before more engineers send the spacecraft. The HeroX page about this problem of scientists makes the following statements.
When scientists on Earth receive sample data from the rover, they must quickly analyze it and make difficult chemistry inferences to prioritize further actions and send those instructions back to the spacecraft.
Contest deadline April 18
In addition to all this, HeroX has also published a list of chemical compounds that examine volatile compounds. Thus, it is necessary to create models that will detect their ‘families’ from a gas analysis. He states that the analyzes will be done on analog samples.
At the same time, the race page states, “The winning techniques could be used to help analyze data from Mars and potentially even inform future designs for mission vehicles.”
HeroX will also share results with analytical chemists, planetary geologists and many data scientists. The deadline for submission of the contest is April 18. For more information about the competition, you can click here or on the HeroX competition page.
What do you think about this competition? You can share your views with us in the comments and SDN Forum section.
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