Leonard David is an award-winning space journalist who has been reporting on space activities for more than 50 years. Currently writing as Space.
While the clamoring to bring bits and pieces of Mars back to Earth for intensive study continues, scientists are also devising instruments and techniques that can be sent to the Red Planet to perform on-the-spot probes for life. Could these low-cost approaches usurp the early need for samples shot directly from Mars?
While biology experiments detected unexpected and enigmatic chemical activity in the Martian soil, a majority of Viking Mars investigators leaned toward no clear, slam dunk proof for the presence of living microorganisms in soil near the landing sites.
"It is clearly the case that the best search for life would be done on samples in laboratories on Earth," McKay told Space.com."But the prospect of bringing back a sample that may have Martian life in it gives many people pause and indeed is regulated, some might say prohibited, by the Outer Space Treaty.""My answer to this is yes and no," McKay responded.
It may well be that public opinion or legal procedure, McKay said"will not support an assumption of no life on Mars for the purposes of sample or astronaut return to Earth without further analyses on Mars, regardless of the scientific consensus," he concluded.One potential NASA mission that has gained support is the Mars Life Explorer . This deep-digging lander would focus on a search for signs of currently existing Red Planet life.
Or how about building an instrument to be used during robotic ice mining missions, a high-tech device to seek Martian life thriving today?
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