[ MUSIC ]
DANNY STOLZMAN: Hello Tanishq, how are you?
This is Danny from THNKR Headquarters.
Would you mind introducing yourself?
Telling me your name?
TANISHQ ABRAHAM: I'm Tanishq Abraham and I'm nine years old and I live in Sacramento, California.
DANNY: Tanishq would you mind introducing who's sitting next to you there?
TANISHQ: This is actually my sister, Tiara Abraham.
She comes to all of my events and without her I wouldn't be able to go to college classes
and many of the events I like to go to.
DANNY: Well we wanted to talk to you Tanishq because there were some recent announcements
by NASA about the curiosity mission to Mars.
And whenever we're confused about something, we like to call you, because you're very good
at explaining things simply.
Would you mind telling us about what exactly the big announcement was at NASA recently?
TANISHQ: Sure Danny!
The Mars Curiosity Rover discovered water, sulfur, and chlorine containing compounds
such as perchlorate and chloridic methane.
DANNY: What do these findings really mean?
Why are they so important?
TANISHQ: Because methane is actually an energy source of some microorganisms and water as
we all know is important for most forms of life.
One way methane is produced is through a process called methanogenesis and in this process
carbon dioxide and hydrogen combine to form water and methane.
And carbon dioxide has been found in the atmosphere of Mars and also in the ice caps of Mars.
Curiosity Rover is basically a full blown laboratory on wheels.
The main instruments that analyze the soil sample was the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument
or the SAM instrument, and the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument or the CheMin instrument.
The sample is put in CheMin and an x-ray is shot at the sample and then a charge coupled
device records the data, the molecule, the element or whatever it is, emits light or
it absorbs the x-rays.
It's basically like a molecular fingerprint.
DANNY: When you first heard the news, how did you react?
What was your response to the press conference?
TANISHQ: Well I was pretty excited that that now they found water and methane and chlorinated
methane on Mars.
It'll take some time finding microbes, living microbes, or real life on Mars.
It'll take some time to find that, but finding water, this discovery was pretty big for me
actually.
DANNY: Do you think there was ever life on Mars?
And if so, what do you think it looked like?
TANISHQ: Well basically, I do think there is life on Mars.
And yeah, when I say life on Mars I mean like small microorganisms, that's what I think
life on Mars would be.
DANNY: Do you think in the far past there ever were bigger organisms?
Maybe green men or otherwise on Mars?
TANISHQ: I don't think so.
That would need billions of years to happen but unfortunately the sun kind of took away
the Martian atmosphere so therefor Mars was exposed to all the suns rays.
DANNY: Do you think that humans should be going to Mars instead of robots?
Or do you think it's ok that Curiosity is going alone without other humans?
TANISHQ: Well what I think is that both machines and humans should go to Mars.
Humans can do some things but machines can do other things, so if they team up and look
for life on Mars then that would be better, you would get more benefits.
So I think that's what NASA should do.
Get some humans to Mars, but at the same time also get some robots to Mars too.
[ SOUND EFFECT ]
TANISHQ: Thank you for watching this video.
If you like what you're watching subscribe to THNKR!