Everyone has gotten really excited over the recent $2.5 billion Curiosity Rover. Which is expected to land on today. (August 8th, 2012) So much so, that NASA has created a game in which you land the Curiosity Rover on Mars and harvest minerals and explore the Red Planet, however; many people don't know that the entire mission has been compromised.
After Curiosity had launched, engineers at NASA reailzed that they had forgotten a crucial part in its final preperation. They didn't sterilize the drills that would prob the planets surface to search for minerals or possible life. This however, is news that has been public since November of 2011.
Why bother studying anything they find? Whatever they find is now contaminated and on a scientific standpoint, unuseable. Why pursue this mission? The excuse of they poured too much money into this project doesn't mean that any evidence they find will be any less useless. This is just one of many issues I've had with NASA recently.
Sources:
xbox 360 game
curiosity rover
contamination
It doesn't matter that curiosity is contaminated. They can always compare the amount of life (microbes) on the drills at baseline and after a certain period of time.
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