Emphasis of Martian Studies Shifts to Finding Life

All space exploration missions headed towards the Red Planet for the last 40 years or so have been focused on recreating the route that water took on Mars billions of years ago. Astrobiologists now agree that it's time to shift the focus of this exploration effort to finding signs of past life there.

NASA says that this change will coincide with the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity, a Mini Cooper-sized rover that is equipped with all the necessary tools to detect signs of microorganisms that may have inhabited the planet.

At this point, an old debate has reignited in the international astronomical community, about whether the NASA Viking landers found traces of organic molecules on Mars or not. Curiosity's investigations are bound to settle this controversy, one way or the other.

At a panel discussion held last week at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, DC, experts agreed that this shift needs to occur now, if Martian studies are to progress.

“We are going to make this transition from following the water to seeking signs of life,” explained the NASA Mars Exploration Rover (MER) director, Doug McCuistion, quoted by Space.

Based on the geological record we now have of the Red Planet, we know that it was wetter, and more Earth-like, during its first billion years of existence. Afterwards, it became a volcanic wasteland, and later on it went to become cold and dry, like we see it today.

There is a large number of explanations for why that happened, but the bottom line is that, at one point, the Red Planet was not red or covered in dust. It had rivers flowing on its surface, and even an ocean covering a large portion of its northern hemisphere.

“If it was Earth-like, did life ever get a chance to get going and is there life there today?” McCuistion said. This is the main question that Curiosity will have to respond, using its state-of-the-art instrument suite and its onboard chemistry lab.

Currently, NASA is in the process of deciding where to land Curiosity. There are four main sites being considered. They were selected based on orbiter data on where water is most likely to have flown in the past.

Conducting studies around former rivers or lakes is very important because this is where it's most likely that traces of past Martian life were preserved, most likely in the form of molecular fossils, organic molecules, or other such structures.