Did the 1976 NASA mission end life on Mars? Read full details about it here

Despite all our missions and efforts on Mars, no evidence has been found to confirm the existence of life. However, decades earlier, in the 1970s, the Viking lander, the first US mission to safely land on and explore Mars, may have brought us closer to such a discovery.

A researcher suggests that evidence of life may exist in Martian soil samples. In our quest to confirm its existence, we have inadvertently eliminated it. According to astronomer Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Germany’s Technical University of Berlin, an experiment designed to detect signs of microbial life on Mars could be fatal.

In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 mission sent two spacecraft to the surface of Mars to investigate the Red Planet and search for signs of life. The experiments involved mixing water and nutrients into samples of Martian soil, based on the assumption that life on Mars, similar to Earth, would need liquid water to survive.

Early results pointed to the possibility of life, but after decades of debate, most researchers concluded that these were likely false signals, shattering earlier expectations. Schulze-Makuch has proposed a theory that the Viking landers, while searching for life on Mars, may have inadvertently destroyed it.

In a commentary for Nature, Schulze-Makuch suggests that potential Martian life, like microbes found in extreme environments like Chile’s Atacama Desert, could survive in extremely dry conditions by relying on salt to draw moisture from the atmosphere.

He explained “experiments conducted by NASA’s Viking landers accidentally killed life on Mars by adding too much water.”

The hypothesis challenges NASA’s long-standing strategy of searching for extraterrestrial life by “following the water.” Schulze-Makuch argued that instead of prioritizing liquid water, future missions should also look for hygroscopic salts, substances that absorb atmospheric moisture. Primary sodium chloride, the salt on Mars, could potentially support microbial life, such as some bacteria that grow in saline solutions on Earth.

Schulze-Makuch compared the potential impact of the Viking experiment on Martian microbes to an event in the Atacama Desert, where heavy rains killed 70-80% of the local bacteria because they could not adapt to the influx of water.

Nearly 50 years after the Viking missions, Schulze-Makuch calls for a new effort to detect life on Mars, incorporating new, advanced technology and knowledge about the planet’s extreme environments.