Mars conditions are incredibly hostile, true. But we are finding extremophiles that are more and more able to deal with hostile conditions. And also finding many potential habitats for life on Mars - not confirmed because we don't have any planned missions to visit them in the near future - but some good evidence for them - indirect.
It rather depends who you ask.
So - I'd say - that rather than fading, that the hope for life on Mars has been increasing, quite rapidly - over the last six years, and especially over the last year or two - amongst some of the researchers in the field anyway.
I should say - I'm not researching in this myself. Just been reading all the papers and following the video casts of conferences and so on as a keen reader of the material.
One of the most optimistic, is Nilton Renno, a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at Michigan University who lead the research into droplets forming on salt / ice interface which has been in all the news recently as "swimming pools for bacteria" on Mars.
This is one of several possible habitats - for an overview see Water and Brines on Mars: Current Evidence and Implications for MSL by Renno (the professor in the video) and Martinez.
One other habitat - top candidate - is the "warm seasonal flows" - as these only have liquid water based explanations at present. Not to be confused with the dry ice gullies or the various wind streaks and grooves - they only occur at temperatures above 0C on sun facing slopes and are seasonal, not correlated with the winds, grow through the spring to summer, fade away in place in autumn. Hard to think what else they could be other than some form of liquid, probably salty brine. Though we don't yet have a good explanation of quite how they form.
For more background information, see also the Present Day Habitability of Mars conference in 2013 - with many hours of video presentations recorded from the conference, on their Program page.
So - is this compatible with ancient life? Could life really have survived for billions of years in such unpromising seeming habitats?
Well - as he says in that video, a tiny drop of water is a swimming pool for a bacteria. They don't need much to survive.
And they can go into dormancy as well. Not for millions of years, at least not Earth life - but there are Earth extremophiles that can survive dormancy of many tens of thousands of years on the Mars surface.
And also UV is turning out - though deadly to most life forms - are Earth extremophiles that can handle Mars levels sufficiently so it seems likely you could have photosynthesis there - in partial shade or under a mm or so of soil.
And - you do get life surviving and continuing in very unpromising Mars like habitats (at least same extreme dryness, absence of nutrients, and reasonably cold - not same as Mars at its coldest at night - but good analogy of Mars daytime temperaturees) in high Atacama deserts and McMurdo dry valleys.
And you get microbes there - with lifetimes, some of them, of thousands of years, amongst the longest lived microbes on our planet, barely metabolising - yet surviving - and successful.
And Earth has been through a snowball phase several times in the past with almost entire surface covered in ice - it might well have been totally covered some say, for millions of years, and our life survived.
So - Mars is basically in an ultra dry terminal snowball phase. Is it possible that life has survived there for billions of years on the surface? Perhaps occasionally retreating underground to caves - or making use of melted ice due to incoming asteroids and comets? (They can produce temporary lakes for a thousand years or so ice covered). Or using volcanic hot spots? Or - just continuous presence of these very meagre habitats on the surface?
That's the big question. Nobody knows. Some look and are very optmisitic, some don't think it is possible at all, or highly unlikely. And the habitats there have not yet been confirmed and some still doubt that they exist at all, calling them "speculative".
But you'd be a brave person I think to say that there absolutely can't be life on Mars now.
See also
Cosmic Radiation, UV And Perchlorates On Mars - Not Lethal For Possible "Swimming Pools For Bacteria" - On Ice / Salt Interfaces
Early Mars had abundant water, and so might have had life. Life seems to have started on Earth as soon as conditions were suitable for it, to within a few hundred million years, the same might well be the case for Mars too.
The big question is how long that water lasted for. There is a fair amount of evidence for a global ocean. Water on Mars - observational evidence For instance, this study in 2010 which studied ancient deltas and concluded that there was good evidence that they all drained into a global ocean Ancient ocean may have covered third of Mars and http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journ...
(note, the other answer here from Edwin Kite is from 2010 so the same year that this new evidence for the global ocean was first presented)
Mars also developed conditions suitable for life before Earth. It is possible that life on Earth developed from micro-organisms that evolved on Mars.
So - it is possible that life did develop on Mars. This could have happened independently from Earth or else it seeded Earth or was seeded by Earth.
Our rovers have explored only a tiny area of Mars, also without microscopes, even Curiosity can't use enough magnification to see fossils of micro-organisms. These might even be common on Mars and we would not see them.
If there is no life on Mars, that is also interesting. It had conditions suitable for life- so what happened during those millions of years if life didn't evolve?
There should at least be evidence of pre-biotic processes. Even in laboratory experiments here on Earth then small structures resembling cells often form, so these surely should form on Mars too where conditions were right.
Also there has been no continental drift, or hardly any drift, on Mars. So those early deposits are still in the exact location where they formed. So on Mars we have the opportunity to directly study an environment similar to the earliest period on Earth, and see what happened.
There just might be small amounts of life on Mars today, increasing evidence that some extremophiles could adapt to some niches
There might well even be life on Mars today as well, since some extremophiles, primary producers, can adapt to such conditions. Lichens have been shown to photosynthesize and survive in the conditions on Mars, using just the moisture of the morning and evening dews you get on some parts of Mars. Also there may well be thin films of salty brine which extremophiles could survive in. So those are two possible niches near the surface.
Another possible niche is deep down in the ice near the poles, under pressure, especially if there is any geothermal heating.
We should be very careful though about introducing new life to Mars
For the future, then humans have the capability to change all that. But we should be careful. Mars has been isolated from the Earth for micro-organisms at least as effectively as the continents here are separated for animals. So introducing life to Mars is like introducing rabbits to Australia.
If there is life already there it might out-compete with it. If there isn't life there, then it would surely contaminate any pre-biotic deposits on Mars making them much harder to study and understand.
Terraforming issues - there is more to it than you might think, it would be easy for things to go wrong
Eventualy we might decide to terraform Mars. We certainly have the capability to massively change the climate of Mars using e.g. greenhouse gases. However whether we also have the capability to do that in a directed and controlled way is another matter.
The biosphere here on the Earth is the result of the interplay of many processes. Mars is a different place. For instance there are no oceans on Mars, though possibly we could create oceans by deliberately impacting comets.
No CO2 cycle on Mars
More fundamentally, there is no continental drift on Mars. This means that there is no way to return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So over a period of hundreds of millions of years with a planetary biosphere then the carbon dioxide would all get locked up in limestone in the oceans, and it would lose its atmosphere.
Atmospheric composition - in a biosphere it is a dynamic process
Then there is the problem of establishing an atmospheric composition suitable for humans to breathe, here on the Earth there are well established cycles to keep the oxygen in balance. But on Mars, those processes might not work in the same way, they will probably be hard to establish and we might not know enough to make sure they are self sustaining.
The planet is far colder, no oceans to start with, no magnetic field so no protection from solar storms, and many other differences from Earth.
One problem for instance, as oxygen is added to the atmosphere, by whatever process, if we have already introduced aerobes, perhaps accidentally, they might proliferate in response, and remove the oxygen as quickly as it is created.
I think that it might be possible to terraform Mars but at present we simply don't know enough to attempt it with any great chance of success.
So, what is the way ahead? Space habitats fir
I feel we should start smaller. Especially, we should try making self-enclosed space habitats first. We should make those self-sustaining as well. If we can't even make a self sustaining large scale space habitat that is stable for decades or more, what chance do we have of establishing a biosphere stable for billions of years?
We may well learn many things from doing that and as a result may be in a better position to properly assess whether it is possible to terraform Mars responsibly and safely.
Telerobotic exploration of Mars can give the human presence for rapid exploration
At the same time we should continue to explore Mars and find out what is there, learn about the early Mars conditions, and find out if there is any existing life on Mars.
All this should be done with the use of remote controlled rovers to avoid contaminating Mars. However these can be controlled by humans in orbit around Mars via telepresence.
This gives the humans the ability to "jump" to any part of Mars where a rover is present, instantaneously, via telerobotic control of the rover. The human astronauts also are in safe "shirt sleeves" conditions in orbit, not affected by the dust-storms, and the bitterly cold below -100C nights on Mars, and other conditions that might make life on the surface tough.
Telerobotic exploration of the surface could be better than direct exploration for early Mars colonists
With the rapid development of telepresence, then this exploration of Mars from orbit could be at least as good as actually living on the surface.
It could be even better. Remember, nearly all the photos you see of Mars are colour corrected to look like an Earth landscape, because that makes it easier for Earth based geologists to recognise the rocks. Human vision via telepresence could be colour corrected in the same way. The advantage of the orbit around Mars of course is that you are close enough to Mars to be able to operate rovers and other equipment on the surface in real time, without significant light speed delays.
The surface of Mars as it is now is far from ideal for colonization. It is on average same temperature as the inner regions of Antarctica, but with wider swings so that the coldest temperatures are far colder. The "atmosphere" would count as a vacuum on Earth. The dust storms obscure the sky and sun sometimes for months on end. In many ways the moon is a far more benign place for space colonization.
So if you lived on the surface on Mars, you would be sometimes unable to see the sky or the sun or to see any distance at all for months on end. When you could see things, the light would be dull, because it is further from the sun, and everything has a dull red hue. The nights are bitterly cold, cold enough for dry ice to form. The days are warmer, sometimes even up to the same temperatures as a summer day on Earth - but you can only leave your habitat if you suit up, which is a long process, and also you have to be very careful because an error in donning your spacesuit could kill you.
It doesn't seem an attractive location for humans to live in to me at present, not permanently. You would probably spend most of your time using telepresence anyway even if living on the surface.
The surface of Mars, even explored by telepresence in this way, also has the major disadvantage over, say, the Moon, that the typical travel time to Mars is six months, and this can only be achieved when conditions are favourable, every 2 years and 2 months. What do you do if a vital piece of equipment gets broken, or someone is seriously ill and needs to be sent to a hospital? Not too bad for adventurous young and hardy explorers, but not so good for colonists with diverse age ranges and fitness levels.
The Moon and NEOs are much easier targets for early space colonization
So, I see the Moon as a more likely first step for colonization. At the same time also colonies in orbit or the NEOs, and space habitats.
There would be explorers in orbit around Mars exploring it via telepresence. But these would be more like the early explorers of Antarctica, explorers who are willing to take risks, and accept a higher level of danger and adventure than most people would judge acceptable, as part of what they do. These first explorations could lead to establishing of a permanent space station in orbit around Mars, and could eventually develop into an orbiting space habitat for colonists, perhaps taking advantage of whatever resources there are in the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.
Decisions about what to do on the Mars surface can be made when we have more knowledge and understanding
Much later on, we should know a lot about conditions on Mars through exploration. We should have much better understanding of regulation of atmospheres, and terraforming through space colonies.
We should also reach the stage where direct observation of the composition of atmospheres of planets around other stars through giant space telescopes is possible (this is not too far in the future).
Then we should have a much better idea than we do now about what effect it would have on the planet to introduce Earth life to it. We should have a better understanding of early Mars, may have detected current life on the planet, or have investigated many locations and not found it. We could do studies involving use of actual Mars soil, maybe in the orbiting habitats around Mars, and see what life does to it, and the different effects of introducing different types of life first.
That will let us make properly informed decisions about whether to colonize Mars or not, and whether it can be terraformed, and whether life needs to be introduced in a careful progression for successful terraforming, or if you can just introduce all of it at once and still hope for success.
I know this is a slow and could be frustrating process for Mars colonization enthusiasts. But on the plus side, you can have colonies on the Moon at the poles maybe, and space colonies using NEO resources, and even have those possibly economically self sustaining, paying for their own development.
Telepresence on Mars from close orbit can be better than actually living on the surface
On Mars, you have a rapid exploration of the entire surface of the planet via telepresence. Via telepresence, humans in space can build structures on the surface too, using materials available on Mars much as if they were there in person. Eventually, build factories on the surface to repair the rovers and telerobots, and eventually even make new ones entirely on the surface (especially if 3D printer technology evolves to make construction of complex electronics easy to do in situ).
With telepresence you can have even finer control than you would in person. There is no need to think of this as a "second best" system. You can make yourself stronger, like using an exo-skeleton. Or you can give yourself have keener vision with more fine control of your hands, as is done in surgery when they use telerobotics for surgery. You can set the vision system to show wavelengths you normally can't see at all, adjust the colours and contrast to approximate a sunny day on Earth rather than the dull red colours of Mars, and so on.
It's not done so much here on Earth because of the expense of telerobotic systems and is mainly used for situations where the expense is offset by the gains, such as military or medical applications.
On Mars, you offset the expense against the costs of landing humans on the surface and it suddenly becomes much lower cost to use expensive telerobotics.
The expense of telerobotics and telepresence on the surface is far less than the expense for a similar project with humans on the surface - less expense for greater scientific gain, as has been found in the studies for the HERRO project.
Indeed, it could be an application of telerobotics that leads to stimulation of the industry and development of new ideas and tools.
See Might there be Microbes on the Surface of Mars? and other articles in my column at science20.comc more about this and references to the literature on all these topics.
It rather depends who you ask.
So - I'd say - that rather than fading, that the hope for life on Mars has been increasing, quite rapidly - over the last six years, and especially over the last year or two - amongst some of the researchers in the field anyway.
I should say - I'm not researching in this myself. Just been reading all the papers and following the video casts of conferences and so on as a keen reader of the material.
One of the most optimistic, is Nilton Renno, a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at Michigan University who lead the research into droplets forming on salt / ice interface which has been in all the news recently as "swimming pools for bacteria" on Mars.
This is one of several possible habitats - for an overview see Water and Brines on Mars: Current Evidence and Implications for MSL by Renno (the professor in the video) and Martinez.
One other habitat - top candidate - is the "warm seasonal flows" - as these only have liquid water based explanations at present. Not to be confused with the dry ice gullies or the various wind streaks and grooves - they only occur at temperatures above 0C on sun facing slopes and are seasonal, not correlated with the winds, grow through the spring to summer, fade away in place in autumn. Hard to think what else they could be other than some form of liquid, probably salty brine. Though we don't yet have a good explanation of quite how they form.
For more background information, see also the Present Day Habitability of Mars conference in 2013 - with many hours of video presentations recorded from the conference, on their Program page.
So - is this compatible with ancient life? Could life really have survived for billions of years in such unpromising seeming habitats?
Well - as he says in that video, a tiny drop of water is a swimming pool for a bacteria. They don't need much to survive.
And they can go into dormancy as well. Not for millions of years, at least not Earth life - but there are Earth extremophiles that can survive dormancy of many tens of thousands of years on the Mars surface.
And also UV is turning out - though deadly to most life forms - are Earth extremophiles that can handle Mars levels sufficiently so it seems likely you could have photosynthesis there - in partial shade or under a mm or so of soil.
And - you do get life surviving and continuing in very unpromising Mars like habitats (at least same extreme dryness, absence of nutrients, and reasonably cold - not same as Mars at its coldest at night - but good analogy of Mars daytime temperaturees) in high Atacama deserts and McMurdo dry valleys.
And you get microbes there - with lifetimes, some of them, of thousands of years, amongst the longest lived microbes on our planet, barely metabolising - yet surviving - and successful.
And Earth has been through a snowball phase several times in the past with almost entire surface covered in ice - it might well have been totally covered some say, for millions of years, and our life survived.
So - Mars is basically in an ultra dry terminal snowball phase. Is it possible that life has survived there for billions of years on the surface? Perhaps occasionally retreating underground to caves - or making use of melted ice due to incoming asteroids and comets? (They can produce temporary lakes for a thousand years or so ice covered). Or using volcanic hot spots? Or - just continuous presence of these very meagre habitats on the surface?
That's the big question. Nobody knows. Some look and are very optmisitic, some don't think it is possible at all, or highly unlikely. And the habitats there have not yet been confirmed and some still doubt that they exist at all, calling them "speculative".
But you'd be a brave person I think to say that there absolutely can't be life on Mars now.
See also
Cosmic Radiation, UV And Perchlorates On Mars - Not Lethal For Possible "Swimming Pools For Bacteria" - On Ice / Salt Interfaces
MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION (OLD ANSWER, MAY REPEAT MYSELF)
Early Mars had abundant water, and so might have had life. Life seems to have started on Earth as soon as conditions were suitable for it, to within a few hundred million years, the same might well be the case for Mars too.
The big question is how long that water lasted for. There is a fair amount of evidence for a global ocean. Water on Mars - observational evidence For instance, this study in 2010 which studied ancient deltas and concluded that there was good evidence that they all drained into a global ocean Ancient ocean may have covered third of Mars and http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journ...
(note, the other answer here from Edwin Kite is from 2010 so the same year that this new evidence for the global ocean was first presented)
Mars also developed conditions suitable for life before Earth. It is possible that life on Earth developed from micro-organisms that evolved on Mars.
So - it is possible that life did develop on Mars. This could have happened independently from Earth or else it seeded Earth or was seeded by Earth.
Our rovers have explored only a tiny area of Mars, also without microscopes, even Curiosity can't use enough magnification to see fossils of micro-organisms. These might even be common on Mars and we would not see them.
If there is no life on Mars, that is also interesting. It had conditions suitable for life- so what happened during those millions of years if life didn't evolve?
There should at least be evidence of pre-biotic processes. Even in laboratory experiments here on Earth then small structures resembling cells often form, so these surely should form on Mars too where conditions were right.
Also there has been no continental drift, or hardly any drift, on Mars. So those early deposits are still in the exact location where they formed. So on Mars we have the opportunity to directly study an environment similar to the earliest period on Earth, and see what happened.
There just might be small amounts of life on Mars today, increasing evidence that some extremophiles could adapt to some niches
There might well even be life on Mars today as well, since some extremophiles, primary producers, can adapt to such conditions. Lichens have been shown to photosynthesize and survive in the conditions on Mars, using just the moisture of the morning and evening dews you get on some parts of Mars. Also there may well be thin films of salty brine which extremophiles could survive in. So those are two possible niches near the surface.
Another possible niche is deep down in the ice near the poles, under pressure, especially if there is any geothermal heating.
We should be very careful though about introducing new life to Mars
For the future, then humans have the capability to change all that. But we should be careful. Mars has been isolated from the Earth for micro-organisms at least as effectively as the continents here are separated for animals. So introducing life to Mars is like introducing rabbits to Australia.
If there is life already there it might out-compete with it. If there isn't life there, then it would surely contaminate any pre-biotic deposits on Mars making them much harder to study and understand.
Terraforming issues - there is more to it than you might think, it would be easy for things to go wrong
Eventualy we might decide to terraform Mars. We certainly have the capability to massively change the climate of Mars using e.g. greenhouse gases. However whether we also have the capability to do that in a directed and controlled way is another matter.
The biosphere here on the Earth is the result of the interplay of many processes. Mars is a different place. For instance there are no oceans on Mars, though possibly we could create oceans by deliberately impacting comets.
No CO2 cycle on Mars
More fundamentally, there is no continental drift on Mars. This means that there is no way to return carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So over a period of hundreds of millions of years with a planetary biosphere then the carbon dioxide would all get locked up in limestone in the oceans, and it would lose its atmosphere.
Atmospheric composition - in a biosphere it is a dynamic process
Then there is the problem of establishing an atmospheric composition suitable for humans to breathe, here on the Earth there are well established cycles to keep the oxygen in balance. But on Mars, those processes might not work in the same way, they will probably be hard to establish and we might not know enough to make sure they are self sustaining.
The planet is far colder, no oceans to start with, no magnetic field so no protection from solar storms, and many other differences from Earth.
One problem for instance, as oxygen is added to the atmosphere, by whatever process, if we have already introduced aerobes, perhaps accidentally, they might proliferate in response, and remove the oxygen as quickly as it is created.
I think that it might be possible to terraform Mars but at present we simply don't know enough to attempt it with any great chance of success.
So, what is the way ahead? Space habitats fir
I feel we should start smaller. Especially, we should try making self-enclosed space habitats first. We should make those self-sustaining as well. If we can't even make a self sustaining large scale space habitat that is stable for decades or more, what chance do we have of establishing a biosphere stable for billions of years?
We may well learn many things from doing that and as a result may be in a better position to properly assess whether it is possible to terraform Mars responsibly and safely.
Telerobotic exploration of Mars can give the human presence for rapid exploration
At the same time we should continue to explore Mars and find out what is there, learn about the early Mars conditions, and find out if there is any existing life on Mars.
All this should be done with the use of remote controlled rovers to avoid contaminating Mars. However these can be controlled by humans in orbit around Mars via telepresence.
This gives the humans the ability to "jump" to any part of Mars where a rover is present, instantaneously, via telerobotic control of the rover. The human astronauts also are in safe "shirt sleeves" conditions in orbit, not affected by the dust-storms, and the bitterly cold below -100C nights on Mars, and other conditions that might make life on the surface tough.
Telerobotic exploration of the surface could be better than direct exploration for early Mars colonists
With the rapid development of telepresence, then this exploration of Mars from orbit could be at least as good as actually living on the surface.
It could be even better. Remember, nearly all the photos you see of Mars are colour corrected to look like an Earth landscape, because that makes it easier for Earth based geologists to recognise the rocks. Human vision via telepresence could be colour corrected in the same way. The advantage of the orbit around Mars of course is that you are close enough to Mars to be able to operate rovers and other equipment on the surface in real time, without significant light speed delays.
The surface of Mars as it is now is far from ideal for colonization. It is on average same temperature as the inner regions of Antarctica, but with wider swings so that the coldest temperatures are far colder. The "atmosphere" would count as a vacuum on Earth. The dust storms obscure the sky and sun sometimes for months on end. In many ways the moon is a far more benign place for space colonization.
So if you lived on the surface on Mars, you would be sometimes unable to see the sky or the sun or to see any distance at all for months on end. When you could see things, the light would be dull, because it is further from the sun, and everything has a dull red hue. The nights are bitterly cold, cold enough for dry ice to form. The days are warmer, sometimes even up to the same temperatures as a summer day on Earth - but you can only leave your habitat if you suit up, which is a long process, and also you have to be very careful because an error in donning your spacesuit could kill you.
It doesn't seem an attractive location for humans to live in to me at present, not permanently. You would probably spend most of your time using telepresence anyway even if living on the surface.
The surface of Mars, even explored by telepresence in this way, also has the major disadvantage over, say, the Moon, that the typical travel time to Mars is six months, and this can only be achieved when conditions are favourable, every 2 years and 2 months. What do you do if a vital piece of equipment gets broken, or someone is seriously ill and needs to be sent to a hospital? Not too bad for adventurous young and hardy explorers, but not so good for colonists with diverse age ranges and fitness levels.
The Moon and NEOs are much easier targets for early space colonization
So, I see the Moon as a more likely first step for colonization. At the same time also colonies in orbit or the NEOs, and space habitats.
There would be explorers in orbit around Mars exploring it via telepresence. But these would be more like the early explorers of Antarctica, explorers who are willing to take risks, and accept a higher level of danger and adventure than most people would judge acceptable, as part of what they do. These first explorations could lead to establishing of a permanent space station in orbit around Mars, and could eventually develop into an orbiting space habitat for colonists, perhaps taking advantage of whatever resources there are in the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos.
Decisions about what to do on the Mars surface can be made when we have more knowledge and understanding
Much later on, we should know a lot about conditions on Mars through exploration. We should have much better understanding of regulation of atmospheres, and terraforming through space colonies.
We should also reach the stage where direct observation of the composition of atmospheres of planets around other stars through giant space telescopes is possible (this is not too far in the future).
Then we should have a much better idea than we do now about what effect it would have on the planet to introduce Earth life to it. We should have a better understanding of early Mars, may have detected current life on the planet, or have investigated many locations and not found it. We could do studies involving use of actual Mars soil, maybe in the orbiting habitats around Mars, and see what life does to it, and the different effects of introducing different types of life first.
That will let us make properly informed decisions about whether to colonize Mars or not, and whether it can be terraformed, and whether life needs to be introduced in a careful progression for successful terraforming, or if you can just introduce all of it at once and still hope for success.
I know this is a slow and could be frustrating process for Mars colonization enthusiasts. But on the plus side, you can have colonies on the Moon at the poles maybe, and space colonies using NEO resources, and even have those possibly economically self sustaining, paying for their own development.
Telepresence on Mars from close orbit can be better than actually living on the surface
On Mars, you have a rapid exploration of the entire surface of the planet via telepresence. Via telepresence, humans in space can build structures on the surface too, using materials available on Mars much as if they were there in person. Eventually, build factories on the surface to repair the rovers and telerobots, and eventually even make new ones entirely on the surface (especially if 3D printer technology evolves to make construction of complex electronics easy to do in situ).
With telepresence you can have even finer control than you would in person. There is no need to think of this as a "second best" system. You can make yourself stronger, like using an exo-skeleton. Or you can give yourself have keener vision with more fine control of your hands, as is done in surgery when they use telerobotics for surgery. You can set the vision system to show wavelengths you normally can't see at all, adjust the colours and contrast to approximate a sunny day on Earth rather than the dull red colours of Mars, and so on.
It's not done so much here on Earth because of the expense of telerobotic systems and is mainly used for situations where the expense is offset by the gains, such as military or medical applications.
On Mars, you offset the expense against the costs of landing humans on the surface and it suddenly becomes much lower cost to use expensive telerobotics.
The expense of telerobotics and telepresence on the surface is far less than the expense for a similar project with humans on the surface - less expense for greater scientific gain, as has been found in the studies for the HERRO project.
Indeed, it could be an application of telerobotics that leads to stimulation of the industry and development of new ideas and tools.
See Might there be Microbes on the Surface of Mars? and other articles in my column at science20.comc more about this and references to the literature on all these topics.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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