Methane has been spotted in the atmosphere of Mars by several researchers, reigniting speculations about the possibility of life on the red planet. On Earth, methane is a common by-product of the metabolism of single-celled organisms. So its presence in the martian atmosphere could be a sign of bacteria still living on the planet. But that isn’t the only possible explanation, says Vittorio Formisano of the Institute of Physics of Interplanetary Space in Rome, who helped to confirm the finding. The methane could be produced by purely geological processes, such as volcanic activity.
March 17th, 2004
‘Life chip’ ready for 2009 Mars missions Nature
A miniature laboratory that can spot a tell-tale chemical signature of life is set to be part of NASA’s 2009 Mars mission. The device will look for amino acids, the molecular building blocks of proteins. “Amino acids are the best molecules to look for if you want to find evidence of life that existed a long time ago. Unlike DNA, they could last for millions of years on Mars without changing,” says Alison Skelley, a chemist at University of California, Berkeley, who helped build the ‘life chip’.
February 10th, 2004
Martian ‘pebbles’ don’t prove watery past Nature
NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue to send back photos from Mars, some offering tantalising geological evidence that water once flowed across the red planet’s surface. But researchers caution that there are other explanations.
December 18th, 2003
Mars in an ice age: The red planet before the present interglacial Nature
Of all Solar System planets, Mars has the climate most like that of Earth, both sensitive to small changes in orbital parameters. So the discovery of recent gullies, buried ice and possible snowpack on Mars has stimulated interest among both terrestrial and planetary scientists. New data from the Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor missions provide more evidence of an icy past. Deposits formed during an ice age 2.1 million to 400,000 years ago point to ice cover at latitudes equivalent to the southern United States and Saudi Arabia on Earth. The cover image shows how Mars would have looked at the height of the ice age. Simulated surface deposit has been superposed on MOLA topography and albedo map.
August 23rd, 2003
All eyes on red planet Nature
Mars is sneaking up on us this week. On 27 August the red planet will be less than 56 million kilometres from Earth, the closest it’s been for 60,000 years. Stargazers on the ground will be able to marvel at the bronze orb in the southeastern skies. Scientists are more blas
December 10th, 2002
Ice packs red planet Nature
Staggering quantities of water are hidden below the surface of Mars, the latest results from the Odyssey spacecraft suggest. The discovery doesn’t alter the Mars’ status as a barren wilderness because the water has been locked-up in subterranean ice for millennia, mainly around the planet’s poles. But the sheer volume of ice does pertain to the likelihood that life once existed on the planet.
December 10th, 2002
Robots to scrutinise Mars’ rocks Nature
A year from now, NASA hopes to be making tracks on Mars once again, this time with two robotic six-wheeled rovers. The agency announced the mission’s objectives this week at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting in San Francisco. The Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) will be launched separately in May and June 2003. Swaddled in air bags, the roving twins will bump down on different sides of the red planet in January 2004, if all goes according to plan.
December 7th, 2001
Mars takes its cap off Nature
The martian ice caps are shrinking. As they are made mostly of frozen carbon dioxide, this evaporation could trigger an increase in Mars’ own greenhouse effect. Images from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show that ice ridges and escarpments have retreated over the past two years or so. The orbiting probe has also captured the ice thickening and thinning with the passing seasons.
February 13th, 2001
Vikings would have missed life on Mars Nature
The Viking space missions to Mars in the 1970s sent back a mixed message about the red planet. The views were fabulous; but the nightlife was a little quiet. The two Viking lander craft touched down on the martian surface in 1976, scooped up handfuls of dust, and pronounced it devoid of the organic material that might signify the presence of microorganisms. But even if there had been several million bacteria-like cells in every gram of Martian soil, the Viking landers would not have detected them, Jeffrey Bada and his co-workers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, now claim.
January 25th, 2001
Rising damp on the red planet Nature
After years of debate, most scientists feel confident that Mars once heard the sound of rushing water. Now the outstanding mystery