Hello, today we had a skype chat with Tanya Harrison, a scientist who worked on the mars rover curiosity.

Here is a picture of what happened :

A Summary

We talked to space scientist Tanya Harrison. She has worked for Nasa on the Mars rover curiosity. She is currently at the University of western  Ontario. During the Skype chat, our class asked her questions about her work on the rovers and about mars in general. I think this a great opportunity to learn about space up close and personal from someone who actually knows what they are talking about. It was very interesting.

The questions we asked were:

1. If Mars fails in preserving life what other planets could sustain life, if there are any?

2. What made you you become interested in this field of work?

What I learnt from the chat:

I learnt the answers to the question so we had and the answers to some other questions other people had.

She answered my question, If Mars fails in preserving life what other planets could sustain life, if there are any? She said ” If we are talking about life as we know it, mars is really the only option in the solar system with the exception of Saturn’s moon titan. Titan is really similar to how early earth was, with a really thick atmosphere and lakes full of hydrocarbon which is really great for microbial life. So if wanted to find life, we might find it there. ”

She also answered Alyson’s question about how she became interested in that particular field of work. She said ” When I was younger I used to watch a lot of star trek and that really got me interested in space and mars especially. When the sojourner landed Nasa released a great animation of it landing on Mars and then I knew I wanted to study mars.”

Another question I found interesting was aquestion about how much a rover cost to build. The curiosity rover cost 2.1 billion dollars to build, spirit and opportunity cost about 700 million.