NASA Rover Finds Compelling Evidence Of Life On Mars

Every year or two, NASA announces that one of its probes has discovered evidence of life on Mars.  The spectacularly successful missions of rovers and orbital laboratories have begun to pry open the secrets of Mars’s past and have offered tantalizing clues of life that existed in the past and exists today.

But they are nothing more than that – clues to the possibility of life.  Other explanations, less exciting than the discovery of life on Mars, have been offered for many of these claims.

Now comes compelling evidence of microbial life on Mars.  The roverCuriosity, exploring the bottom of a crater where it is believed water was present a billion years ago, recorded huge “spikes” in methane gas – 10 times the background level of methane in the atmosphere – strongly suggesting that microbes are present near the surface.

Independent:

Mysterious spikes of methane that cannot easily be explained by geology or other theories have been found by an instrument on the robot, which landed on the planet in 2012. Scientists can’t be sure what is causing the spikes, but it is possible that it could be very small, bacteria-like living organisms.

If the gas is coming from living microbes then it would mark one of the biggest discoveries in history. On Earth, 95% of methane comes from microbial organisms, but there are many non-biological processes that can also generate the gas.

Scientists have said that the rover now has to test and re-test the possibility of life, ahead of an unmanned mission in 2020 that would look for the source of the methane.

Previous satellite observations have detected unusual plumes of methane on the planet, but none as extraordinary as the sudden “venting” measured by Curiosity at the 96-mile wide Gale Crater, where evidence suggests water once flowed billions of years ago.

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