Meet Orpheus – A Hopper Mission Built To Hunt For Life In Martian Volcanoes

Image of part of Cerberus Fossae near the Athabasca Valles takes by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit - NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

We’ve spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we’ve been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it’s likely that it’s been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).