Life in our neighbourhood

Enrique Soto

November 26, 2012

I believe top priority should be finding if there is life in our neighbourhood, of which there are tantalizing cues both in Mars and some of the moons of Jupiter. I think that is important because it would have enormous implications for our understanding of the universe, whether life is frequent or not, or if panspermia is, and about life on Earth. The way I would do that would be with more robotic exploration of the Jupiter’s moons and with humans on Mars. I would bypass Earth’s moon entirely for the time being. Although I can see that a robotic telescope on the far side of the moon would be something very interesting too. On the long run, Mars should be our first colony out of Earth. I do not know if with terraforming or not, but what it is evident from our knowledge of the history of Earth is that “The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”--Robert A. Heinlein