Viking programme
A scientist in Germany has claimed that the US space agency NASA had discovered life on the Mars planet 50 years ago but accidentally destroyed it. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, NASA’s Viking programme, which began in the middle of the 1970s, according to an astrobiology scientist and faculty member at the Technical University of Berlin, unwittingly ruined that potential. NASA’s Viking programme brought two rovers to the Martian surface, giving people their first look at the planet’s surface and allowing for the biological study of the planet’s rocks and soil.
Study of Martian soil
The expedition yielded information about volcanoes, and their slopes were very similar to those in Hawaii, suggesting that they had formerly seen rain.
The German scientist said that in accordance with the original Viking experiments, radioactive carbon and nutrient-infused water were added to the red Martian soil. On Mars, any hypothetical bacteria would consume the nutrients and produce a gas that contains radioactive carbon.
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Schulze-Makuch hypothesises that the NASA experiment may have killed these potential bacteria by overwhelming them.
According to the German scholar, the Viking landers apparently had a device for detecting chemical molecules. At the time, the presence of chlorinated organics in trace proportions was thought to be caused by contamination from Earth. Gerald Soffen, the project scientist, came to the opposite conclusion about the Viking mission.
The Phoenix lander, Curiosity, and Perseverance rovers, which were launched in 2008, later provided confirmation that native organic molecules do, in fact, exist on Mars in a chlorinated form.
The main points made by Dirk Schulze-Makuch
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-Life on Mars may have been found over 50 years ago, but it might also have been accidentally exterminated. This notion was developed in response to the murky outcomes of life detection studies carried out by NASA’s Viking landers in the middle of the 1970s.
-Small levels of chlorinated organics were found by the Viking landers, which were first thought to be tainted from Earth. Later flights, however in a chlorinated form, have confirmed the existence of native organic molecules on Mars.By residing within salt rocks and soaking up water straight from the atmosphere, life on Mars may have evolved to survive in its dry environment. These potential bacteria may have been destroyed by the Viking investigations, which entailed adding water to soil samples.
