Casius Quadrangle - Mars Science Laboratory

Mars Science Laboratory

Nilosyrtis is one of the sites proposed as a landing site for the Mars Science Laboratory. However, it did not make the final cut. It was in the top 7, but not in the top 4. The aim of the Mars Science Laboratory is to search for signs of ancient life. It is hoped that a later mission could then return samples from sites identified as probably containing remains of life. To safely bring the craft down, a 12 mile wide, smooth, flat circle is needed. Geologists hope to examine places where water once ponded. They would like to examine sediment layers.

Read more about this topic:  Casius Quadrangle

Famous quotes containing the words mars, science and/or laboratory:

    What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    He has been described as “an innkeeper who hated his guests, a philosopher, and poet who left no written record of his thought, a despiser of women who gave all he had to one, an aristocrat, a proletarian, a pagan, an arcadian, an atheist, a lover of beauty, and, inadvertently, the stepfather of domestic science in America.”
    —Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
    Milan Kundera (b. 1929)