All articles tagged with #viking mission
On the 50th anniversary of Viking 1’s Mars landing, Steven Benner argues Viking’s GC-MS may have detected organics and that NASA scientists dismissed them, suggesting Mars could harbor extant life or have had a second origin of life; if validated, the claim would reshape views on life’s prevalence in the universe, though it remains controversial and NASA has not commented.
An opinion piece argues that life on Mars is almost certain, revisiting Viking’s life‑detection results and explaining how the GCMS could have missed organics due to perchlorates; later findings of organics by Curiosity and evidence of interplanetary rock transfer bolster the case that Mars could have hosted life earlier and may have seeded Earth, urging exploration for Martian prebacteria to illuminate life’s origins.
A 50-year-old scientific conclusion from the Viking Mars mission, which declared Mars lifeless due to the absence of detected organics, is now believed to be mistaken. New evidence from recent missions suggests that Mars may harbor or have harbored life, prompting a reevaluation of past assumptions and the need for dedicated future missions to search for life on Mars.
Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch suggests that NASA's Viking landers may have accidentally killed potential Martian life in the 1970s by using water-based experiments, which could have been harmful to life forms adapted to Mars' arid conditions. He argues that Martian life might rely on salt deposits to draw moisture, similar to organisms in Earth's driest regions, and proposes focusing on salts in future life-detection missions on Mars.