In its eerie likeness to Earth, Mars has long captured our imaginationsboth as a destination for humankind and as a possible home to extraterrestrial life. It is our twenty-first century New World; its explorers robots, shipped 350 million miles from Earth to uncover the distant planet s secrets.
Its most recent scout is Curiositya one-ton, Jeep-sized nuclear-powered space laboratorywhich is now roving the Martian surface to determine whether the red planet has ever been physically capable of supporting life. In "Red Rover," geochemist Roger Wiens, the principal investigator for the...