Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NASA's Instrument For Detecting Life On Mars

Posted by kdawson on from the knock-knock dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "With the financial help of NASA, American and European researchers have developed a new sensor to check for life on Mars. It should also be able to determine if traces of life's molecular building blocks have been produced by anything that was once alive. The device has been tested in the Atacama Desert in Chile. It should be part of the science payload for the ExoMars rover planned for launch in 2013."

1 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Heh by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that totals up to 0 life

    Actually Mars is a lot like Antarctica. The air temperature is sometimes above zero C, but mostly below.

    Never the less, life survives there. At one stage one of the experiments which flew to mars on Viking was tried out in Antarctia and failed to detect life.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au