Life on Mars - but 'we sent it'

Found on New Scientist on Thursday, 25 March 2004
Browse Astronomy

There is life on Mars, a researcher has announced at a conference - unfortunately it is just spaceship-borne contamination.

"I believe there is life on Mars, and it's unequivocally there, because we sent it," Andrew Schuerger of the University of Florida told the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, recently. He has been granted funding from NASA's planetary protection office to help develop better sterilisation techniques for future missions.

Schuerger says that of all the space probes sent to Mars, only the two Viking craft in 1976 were adequately heat sterilised. The procedures used for all missions since then, including NASA's twin rovers and Europe's Beagle 2, would have left some microbes aboard.

"They are probably not going to survive in 200 kelvin conditions and in sulphuric acid," says Jeff Kargel of the US Geological Survey, who believes that ponds and marshes of acidic brines are possible or even likely on Mars today.

But, he adds, "Maybe they could. And maybe we've just done a really terrible thing."

Ok, species spread all over the world thanks to globalization; this already causes problems for some endemic species, which are suddenly under attack by imported animals. And now we successfully managed to infect a whole planet.