{"id":788510,"date":"2026-10-01T12:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788510\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T12:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:04:09","slug":"nasa-heads-to-scottish-highlands-in-its-search-for-life-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788510\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasa heads to Scottish Highlands in its search for life on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is not the first time Scotland&#8217;s ancient geology has been used by scientists to help them understand how life could have existed on Mars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, technology which will be used in the search for evidence of Martian life was tested by a University of St Andrews team at Lower Diabaig, in Torridon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The rocks in the area are billions of years old and similar to those found on the Red Planet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Eight years ago, a Nasa Mars rover, Curiosity, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-42608947\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">explored a part of the planet named after Torridon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Martian geological areas and features have been named by Nasa after places on Earth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Several of the names were taken from Scotland and, as well as Torridon, there is a Siccar Point, Muck, Wick, Sandwick and Holyrood on Mars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nasa chose the name Torridon due to the Torridonian Supergroup, a geological formation in the north-west Highlands that contains some of the oldest evidence of life of any rocks in the UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-20007483\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In 2012<\/a>, Glenelg held a celebration in honour of a location on Mars being named after the small Highland community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is not the first time Scotland&#8217;s ancient geology has been used by scientists to help them understand&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}