Word: able
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ABL. Final step, some time in the early 1970s, will be to land an ABL (Automated Biological Laboratory) equipped to search for and analyze anything resembling life, and to send reports back to earth by radio. The ABL must be prepared to select and analyze kinds of life unknown on earth. But there is little chance that any large hostile creatures will attack and destroy it. Martian life is probably lowly, but no one really knows...
Whether discovered by a flyby, an orbiter, or an ABL, the first proof of life on Mars will be a startling breakthrough in man's quest for knowledge. It will be evidence that life is a normal phenomenon in the universe, not just an oddity limited to the earth. And if life has developed on both the earth and Mars, it almost certainly exists on millions or billions of planets; some of its forms must be more intelligent than anything that man can now imagine...