After Dark

From Wired.com:

It's still unclear whether the methane seeping out of the Martian ground is generated by geological or biological processes, but the discovery is surprising and important enough that it could reset NASA's Mars exploration strategy.

Methane, an organic molecule that on Earth is usually produced by life, has been found emanating from three specific regions on the surface of Mars.

The regions have suddenly become the most defined and accessible regions in the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. While the observation is not definitive proof of life on Mars, it’s the most promising sign yet.

It’s still unclear whether the methane seeping out of the Martian ground is generated by geological or biological processes, but the discovery is surprising and important enough that it could reset NASA’s Mars exploration strategy.

“It’s prudent that we begin to explore Mars looking for the possibility of a life form that’s exhaling methane,” said Lisa Pratt, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Team and a geoscientist at Indiana University who was not involved in the research.

Though we’ve been looking for life on Mars, it was no longer considered the best candidate for contemporary life in our solar system. Several scientific missions stretching from the Viking missions through the recently completed Mars Phoenix mission have found no evidence for life or liquid water on the surface of the red planet.

But the new spectroscopic observations of a seasonal methane release point to some active process on Mars — and it’s as likely to be life as anything else. That’s because most of the methane that we know here on Earth is produced by microbes as a waste product of, well, living.

“This is the first definitive detection of methane on Mars and the first definitive identification of active regions of release,” said Michael Mumma, a NASA Goddard Institute scientist and co-author of a paper Thursday in Science on the observations.

One region in particular — Nili Fossae — could be the subject of increasing attention. It was recently dropped from the list of landing sites for the next big upcoming Mars science mission.

Mumma’s co-author and Goddard colleague, Geronimo L. Villanueva, said that the results are particularly “striking” because the methane is coming from regions that have a “rich history.”

“These regions show evidence that water once flowed over them,” Villanueva said. “This is very important because if this water is still available below the surface, some activity, geology, biology could be using it.”

One region in particular — Nili Fossae — could be the subject of increasing attention. It was recently dropped from the list of landing sites for the next big upcoming Mars science mission, the Mars Science Laboratory. The new evidence could put Nili Fossae back onto the list, said Michael Meyer, NASA’s Mars program lead scientist, particularly with the recent two-year delay of that mission.

Pratt also argued that the observations and the regions about which they were made, are “doubly important” because life might not just exhaling methane, but using it as well.

“The fact that [we know methane] is now expressed in significant quantities at the surface allows us to say, it’s much easier to make a living consuming methane than to try to make a living of producing methane by carbonate reduction,” said Pratt. “If there is methane coming out in focused areas and there is life, then the life should be where the resource is. This gives us a bull’s eye to go after it.”

Suddenly, the search for life on Mars is exciting again. 

“We are now entering a new era,” said Mumma. “Now we’re looking at an active Mars.”

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