With their tasks complete, our astronauts will leave the Martian surface and follow a new Earth-bound trajectory. Mission 2004 will not end there, however. Our Astronauts will be bringing back critical surface samples of the Martian planet for terrestrial scientists. They will be transmitting large amounts of data generated by the experiments carried out on Mars. This data, and the surface samples, will be scrutinized and analyzed by the scientific community on Earth for years to come.

The existence of life on Mars has been uneasily questioned by people for many years. At one point many believed that an intelligent civilization had built canal systems on the Martian surface. The Viking missions, however, seemed to eliminate any possibility for the existence of Martian life. Then, the ALH-84001 meteoroids sparked a new public interest in Mars. Mission 2004 has the qualities essential to both finding scientifically acceptable evidence of life on Mars, and building on the spark of interest and imagination that is quickly gaining ground in the public eye. Mission 2004 could lead the way to future manned missions to Mars. It could demonstrate the feasibility of the technologies involved in sustaining human life on other planets. At the very least, it could answer the question that has had its many ups and downs in the scientific community:

Is there life on Mars?