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SUMMARY:The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover and the search for life on ancien
 t Mars - Nick Tosca (Earth Sciences\, Cambridge)
DTSTART:20211118T160000Z
DTEND:20211118T170000Z
UID:TALK162739@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Annelies Mortier
DESCRIPTION:The successful landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover in 
 February 2021 set in motion one of the greatest international scientific e
 ndeavours of our time. Within the next ten years\, NASA and ESA will work 
 together to return samples from a four-billion-year-old lake deposit on Ma
 rs in a major advance in our understanding of its capacity to have support
 ed microbial life. But could microbial life have emerged on ancient Mars? 
 Did liquid water persist long enough? Did the redox state of the surface a
 nd atmosphere provide the necessary conditions to facilitate prebiotic syn
 thesis and an origin for life? If not\, how did environments on Mars and t
 heir evolution differ from that of the Earth? How can this inform our unde
 rstanding of planetary evolution and the search for potentially habitable 
 exoplanets? This talk will introduce a geological record that exists nowhe
 re else in the Solar System\, discuss the scientific significance of Perse
 verance’s landing site\, provide an update on recent findings of the Per
 severance Rover mission\, and discuss why Mars exploration helps address k
 ey questions surrounding the origins of life on Earth. 
LOCATION:Sackler (sign-up needed) + ONLINE - Details will be sent by email
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