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American Morning

Can Life on Mars be Simulated on Earth?

Aired July 19, 2001 - 11:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We take you now to the Arctic Circle region this morning, where scientists are trying to understand what life may be like on Mars. The exact location is Devon Island, Canada, an area considered to be similar to Mars.

It also just happens to be where we find CNN's space correspondent Miles O'Brien, who joins us now live by videophone.

Miles, good Mars morning to you.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Leon.

It is a brisk morning here. The wind is whipping across the plain -- oh, I guess that would be Oklahoma. We are in Devon Island, which is in the Canadian High Arctic, where scientists led by this gentleman, Dr. Pascal Lee, have been coming for the past five years to, believe it or not, try to learn more about Mars.

We will explain a little bit about that as we take a look at some pictures. Yesterday, Pascal and I had the opportunity to fly over a good portion of this West Virginia-sized pile of rocks that is uninhabited, except for the scientists every summer. And we looked at some of the very interesting features on this island, which are very reminiscent of Mars.

And Pascal was pointing out a series of valleys that were created by the melting of ice sheets.

Pascal, why is that interesting to scientists? And how does that relate to Mars?

PASCAL LEE, PLANETARY SCIENTIST: Well, we are trying to understand our own planet, what planets mean, how diverse they can be, what potential they all have for life, and why is it that we find some planets with life and others without.

So by coming here, we are recognizing some landforms that we see on Mars. And we are wondering why. Is this similarity just an appearance or is there something really fundamentally common between our world and Mars? So by understanding how these landforms form here on Earth, we are able to reconstruct some possible environments for early Mars, or Mars even at present.

And by doing that, we are able to assess perhaps better the conditions under which life might have appeared on Mars.

O'BRIEN: All right. That is one of the big issues that the scientists are working on here. The other thing they're doing across the ridge from where we sit right now is, there is a group of people that are simulating Mars missions.

A half dozen of them go inside a simulated spaceship. And every time they set out, Leon, they suit up as if they were in the atmosphere of Mars and couldn't breathe the air. It gives them an opportunity to understand what it would be like to live in those close confines and also try to work with those bulky suits.

Pascal, some of that looks like it might be a bit of a -- well, a stunt. Is there some scientific validity to what they are doing?

LEE: There are several things that we are after here.

First of all, planning a human mission to Mars is a complicated thing. It will take a lot of planning and preparation. In some areas, we are relatively well advanced. We have the technology lined up, such as rocket propulsion. These are things that we are already quite far ahead on.

There are other aspects that just haven't been really studied in a way that allows us to plan for a mission properly -- in particular: How will humans do exploration and science on Mars? One of the things that we're trying to here is get a sense of what burden will be imposed on the science team to do the field science on Mars, given that Mars has a lethal external environment.

You cannot just walk outside and go pick up rocks. You have to put on a space suit. That takes time. That has a certain weight on the planning of your activity, on the way you live and work. And so by subjecting some of us to doing our field work under those constraints, we're hoping to learn some operational aspects of how to live and work on Mars.

O'BRIEN: All right, some important questions about what might happen on Mars may in fact be answered here, about 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

We are going to be joining some folks on the Web in just a few minutes. Leon, I know you have the details for people. We would like you to pose questions to myself and Pascal Lee at CNN.com in just a few seconds.

For now, it's Pascal and Miles from nowhere -- Leon.

(LAUGHTER)

HARRIS: No, you're not from nowhere. We'll see you guys in just a little bit.

That's right; Miles is going to have a Web chat. You can find that at CNN.com. It starts at -- the Webcast, rather, starts at 11:30 Eastern. Actually, that means right now, which is why Miles had to go right now.

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