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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."

2 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. They could be looking for the wrong clues...! by bogaboga · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Those scientists could be looking for the wrong clues, and here's why I think so:

    Who tells them that life on Mars is similar to life on earth? You could find that "life" on Mars is based on an entirely different system not similar to that on earth.

    I'd like them to modify their finding to some thing like..."Scientists develop tools to detect life similar to Earth's life on Mars."

  2. Why should it find life on Mars ? by computernut · · Score: 0, Redundant

    While, I am all for looking for life outside of earth (I am a firm supporter of the concept of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), I have difficulty comprehending, why we keep looking for life signs that resemble that on Earth. We (life on earth) had a unique set of conditions and situations that led to life forming here and eventually to humans evolving.
    There doesn't seem to be (to my knowledge--correct me if I am wrong) anything to support the fact that similar chain of events have taken place on Mars... so why should life there , resemble in anyway what we expect it to do ?

    The article says key molecules associated with life. How do we know what Martian Life forms have these molecules ? For all we know, one of the rocks that sit alongside one of the many instruments we sent there, maybe representative of Martian Life. ... for all we know, they might be moving or have some phenomena that we don't observe simply because we are not either in a position to know how to look for it, or we can't observe it... We can see light and UV and IR (by instruments)..how if life there exisits in some pure energy form ? (and we can't see/feel/observe it ?)

    I am all in support of this mission, but I believe that the space exploration agencies should try to keep a more open mind as to what they expect to find life to resemble out side of our planet.