What the hell is going on on Mars? (UPDATED)

The UK could lift its long-standing veto on manned space flights as it considers creating a British rival to Nasa called Her Majesty’s Space Agency.

A review of the country's space strategy, due to be announced tomorrow morning by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, aims "to thrust the UK space sector forward for the next 40 years and beyond".

The announcement is timed to coincide with celebrations around the world marking the 40th anniversary of Nasa’s Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk.

"We need to get the next generation excited about the idea of missions to Mars, as one of the people who might go from this country is probably a teenager today," he said. "We should keep a focus of the areas that we are good at – building satellites, space science, building probes etc – but also consider the probability of a British person going to Mars."- Wired

Now Canada is getting in on the act:

The PRIME science team has tentatively selected a specific and compelling feature on the surface of Phobos as the target landing site. Popularly known as the “Phobos Monolith”, it is a building-sized object that appears to be a boulder exposed relatively recently in an otherwise desolate area of the asteroid-like moon. Scientists on the PRIME team are interested in such boulders as they might represent unique opportunities to examine actual samples of Phobos’s bedrock up close. PRIME Deputy Principal Investigator Dr. Alan Hildebrand believes that the Phobos Monolith could hold the answers to the moon’s composition and history. “If we can get to that object, we likely don’t need to go anywhere else,” he advised the science team.

How is a boulder exposed on an asteroid? Maybe the answer to that question explains the urgency here. Cheers again to Eleleth. Click here for a shot of the boulder, link courtesy of joeds.

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