The U.S. space agency said last week that it had a major announcement planned for today about a “major science finding” concerning Mars, and scheduled a news briefing for 11:30 a.m. at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
But the agency would not reveal what the discovery is, leading to speculation that it concerned whether Mars was or is capable of sustaining life as we know it.
The briefing is scheduled to be broadcast live on NASA Television and on the NASA.gov/NasaTV website.
NASA experts, including Jim Green, the director of planetary science, and Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, and others, will be on-hand to explain the findings and answer questions from reporters and from the public.
Members of the public can pose questions to the experts using the website Twitter and the hashtag #AskNASA, the agency said.
“Unraveling the story of water on Mars is important to unlocking its past climate history, which will help us understand the evolution of all planets, including our own,” NASA states on its website.
Other experts expected to participate in the news briefing and answer questions from the public include Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Alfred McEwen of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
NASA has two mechanical rovers operating on Mars, named Spirit and Opportunity, although the Spirit rover stopped communicating with Earth in 2010.
The Opportunity rover continues to travel on the planet’s surface and transmit data, however.
