Is there life on Mars? has remained the central question of the Mars mission for decades as the Perseverance rover starts laying titanium tubes on the surface of the Red Planet for upcoming missions to pick up. The Red Giant is currently being explored by a number of nations, but it keeps posing difficulties after difficulties.
NASA scientists believe that even though they have not yet discovered the first signs of life on the planet, Mars is too large to conclude that there has never been life on the currently inhospitable and barren planet. As humans consider the possibility of establishing colonies on Mars in the future, the Perseverance rover is searching for evidence of ancient microbial life on the planet.
While NASA hasn’t discovered any evidence of life currently on Mars, Heather Graham, an astrobiologist at NASA, notes that the planet may have supported life in the past. “We have been searching for life on Mars for a very long time,” Graham says. Mars once may have had conditions that were favourable for life, according to decades of exploration.
All of Prime, half the price.
Qualifying government assistance recipients can access all of Prime for $6.99/month (reg. /month).
“Numerous pieces of evidence suggest that Mars once had a sizable ocean and an atmosphere that was capable of supporting life. But there is still a sizable portion of Mars to discover. There are areas that could be inhabited, such as the deep subsurface, where fluids or living organisms could exist while being shielded from the radiation that is so harmful on the surface “Graham includes.
Three rovers are currently searching the Martian surface for clues to the planet’s mysteries. These include the Zhurong rover from China and the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers from NASA. In the meantime, a multitude of probes in the planet’s orbit are observing it and analysing its atmosphere, surface features, and topography. Together with the Perseverance rover, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is assisting in the search for extraterrestrial life.
In a September briefing, NASA claimed that the SUV-sized rover had collected the majority of the organic-rich material from the crater. But that does not imply that life might have existed. It simply means that when these samples arrive on Earth in the last years of this decade or the first years of the next, there may be a chance that some unusual discoveries are concealed in the future.
“Now that we have instruments on the Martian surface, we can learn more about these regions that might be habitable and delve deeper into the possibility of habitability in those rock cores. So, does Mars have life? Although we have not yet discovered it, there is still much of Mars to discover “Graham believes.
