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DannyB writes:

NASA May Have Inadvertently Killed Life on Mars, Scientist Says

from science alert ...

[....] decades ago in the 1970s, when the Viking landers became the first US mission to safely land on and explore the red planet, we may have been close.

One researcher raises the possibility that life existed in a sample of Martian soil. And then, in our quest to sniff it, we snuffed it out. Just like that.

[....] an experiment to detect the signs of microbial life on Mars could have been deadly.

[....] it's essential for us to consider thoroughly the ecology of Mars when designing future experiments.

[....] One of those experiments, the gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GCMS), found chlorinated organics. At the time, that result was interpreted as contamination from human cleaning products, and thus a null detection for signs of biology.

We know now that chlorinated organics are native to Mars, although whether they are produced by biological or non-biological processes remains unknown.

There has been some speculation in recent years about the destructiveness of the Viking biological experiments. The GCMS needed to heat the samples to separate out the various materials therein. That, subsequent analysis revealed, could have incinerated the very organics it was hoping to find.

[....] what would happen if you poured water over these dry-adapted microbes. Might that overwhelm them? In technical terms, we would say that we were hyperhydrating them, but in simple terms, it would be more like drowning them," Schulze-Makuch explained in his column.

"It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviors decide, 'Humans need water. Let's put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!'

Kidney stones weigh less on Mars.

[Editor's Comment:: Title changed to more accurately reflect summary content--JR ]

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