If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

I enjoyed this movie.

Saw that at the cinema, Calvin, really enjoyable, I wonder why there wasn't a sequel as the ending was set up for one.

I haven’t seen that one but I saw this one:

Martian



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/

Saw that too and I enjoyed the idea about growing food for sustainability, but "Life" and it's plot stuck with me more strongly.

?

NASA have done a lot of research into Hydro
https://www.nasa.gov/content/growing-plants-in-space

From what I read, this particular venture is geological. Not surprising really. They are looking for signs of past (or present) life. ( But maybe not life as we know it Jim). Being a rock hound I am finding it very intriguing. For the moment if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then I am going to assume it’s a duck. But space exploration often surprises us with its findings. So am prepared to be surprised too.

This photo of Jezero crater was provided by a Mars Geologist. I can see why they picked it now. There is or rather was more than one delta and river draining into the crater. There is a hint of widespread sediment covering the opposite side of the crater.

The Geologist writes:


The 45 km wide Jezero Crater, landing site of the MSL Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover. This image is a mosaic incorporating high-resolution surface imagery by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX), MRO Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), and Mars Express HRSC collected between 2004 and 2019. The image scale is approximately 6 meters per pixel.

Jezero Crater is an ancient crater that is approximately 45 km in diameter. The crater once hosted a large lake, which can be deduced from the large river canyons which cut into its western and eastern rims. The eastern channel, which flows away from the crater, could only have formed when water overtopped the rim and carved a drainage valley through erosion.

The most compelling geologic feature of Jezero is the large delta at the mouth of the western canyon. On Earth, deltas have unusually good biological preservation due to rapid burial by sediments being delivered by a river. The Jezero delta is also associated with carbonate rocks, a rare occurrence on the Martian surface. These rocks break down rapidly in acidic conditions, suggesting the lake was full of water that was near neutral or slightly alkaline pH - benign conditions for the emergence of life resembling terrestrial organisms. As a mission designed to search for evidence of ancient Martian life, there were few better spots for Perseverance to look.

I don’t know where he gets the idea that there are carbonate rocks there. Later... got it. They detected the carbonates from orbit.

I just checked with the author. “Relatively sure, orbital near-infrared spectroscopy picked up some spectral features that are best explained by carbonates...” Which means it needs to be verified from geological samples.

How times have changed.
When I was a small boy, the idea that humans would be going to Mars was so far fetched as to be ridiculous.
Now it sounds like it is a foregone conclusion.

I think they have to get a team up there on the ground. They can only determine so much from photos, spectroscopy etc.

https://www.philstar.com/entertainm...asa-astronaut-filipinos-can-go-space-russians