Methane on Mars. Does it mean "early life"?

 

 By Jaiden Hawk              August 1, 2018

NASA scientists have discovered large amounts of methane on Mars, which could be an indication of early life on the red planet.

The discovery was made by the Curiosity spacecraft, which was able to measure the amount of methane on Mars and discover the largest amount of methane on Mars in the Gale Crater area on the surface of the earth's adjacent planet in the solar system.

Curiosity achieved this feat, although it was not equipped with the tools to determine the exact source of the gas, Sky News reported.

But this discovery is particularly important because it may indicate life on the red planet.

NASA chose the crater in 2011 as the landing site of curiosity, when it was launched on November 26, 2011.

According to NASA calculations, Curiosity has discovered 21 parts of 1 billion methane in Mars, three times what was found in 2013 measurements.

This is also the highest concentration of methane the spacecraft has recorded since landing on Mars on August 6, 2012.

Although this amount of methane is small compared to its quantities on Earth, with an estimated concentration of about 1,800 parts of a billion parts of methane, the discovery will certainly arouse the curiosity of scientists dedicated to observing the red planet, looking for signs of life.

Paul Mahafi, lead researcher at NASA's Mars Sample Analysis Unit, acknowledged that Curiosity's limited capabilities made it impossible to know the exact source of methane."It may be biologically or geologically, or perhaps ancient or modern life," but its emission must have occurred in an era close.

Sunlight is known to destroy methane several hundred years after it enters the atmosphere, suggesting that the newly discovered quantity may be linked to this time frame, although there is a possibility that the gas has been trapped under the surface of Mars for millions or billions of years, and then has not managed to escape. Only recently.

Although previous discoveries have allowed researchers to document the frequent increase and decline of gas on Mars, efforts to use data to detect potential life have so far not been coordinated.

While the latest detection was the largest Nasa has ever done, other space agencies have not been able to reach similar mission readings since they began monitoring the Red Planet.

For example, the European Space Agency (MARS Express) spacecraft was able to match the measurements obtained by NASA only once, and its mars-tracking orbital spacecraft ,"Tris gas orbiter", discovered anything.