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NASA Denies Report on Mars LifeBy Irene Mona Klotz, Discovery News - 18 February 2005 As news reports circulated this week that two NASA scientists have strong evidence for current life on Mars, NASA released a statement denying the claim. The existence of the research paper, as reported Thursday by space industry Web site Space.com, ostensibly was written by Mars researchers Carol Stoker and Lawrence Lemke, both of whom work at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. Stoker and Lemke could not be reached for comment by Discovery News, Space.com, or Mumma. However, on Friday, NASA released the following statement to the press: "News reports on Feb. 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect. "NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for Martian life. "Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting Martian life." While evidence for microbial life on Mars is mounting, far more work needs to be done before any conclusions can be made, the head of NASA's astrobiology center told Discovery News on Thursday.
In an interview, Michael Mumma said that much of the methane in Earth's atmosphere is the result of biological processes, although some can be traced to non-biological activities, such as geochemistry. For example, as Earth's tectonic plates shift, materials within a plate carried beneath the edge of an adjoining plate can reach Earth's hot region of magma and convert into new minerals, releasing hydrogen in the process. That hydrogen can then react with carbon to form methane, which percolates upward until it is eventually released into the atmosphere. Though researchers have not found evidence of active plate tectonics on Mars, other non-biological processes may be responsible for the small amounts of methane discovered in the planet's atmosphere by researchers using instruments on Europe's Mars Express spacecraft. Space.com, which based its article on unnamed, secondary sources, reported that Stoker and Lemke had added two new findings to the previously reported existence and location of Mars methane to reach their conclusion. The researchers reportedly based their finding, in part, on the discovery of a salt-rich rock found on Mars by Opportunity, one of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers. The robotic explorers have been scrutinizing rock and soil samples since January 2004 for signs of past water. The rock contains jarosite, a mineral salt, and was among key evidence scientists cited in concluding that the Opportunity landing site was once the reservoir of a shallow, salty sea. The presumption that NASA has been following is that the existence of water is a key factor for the existence of life.
In a quest to identify life in extreme environments on Earth, Stoker and Lemke reportedly made discoveries during a 2003 field expedition to Brazil's highly acidic Rio Tinto river, which, when combined with conclusions reached by scientists studying the Mars jarosite rock, could bolster the theory for current-day life on Mars. Mumma, however, pointed out that the jarosite-rich rock Opportunity found dates back billions of years, while the existence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars points to relatively recent and ongoing events, whether triggered by biological or other activities. "We don't know the correlation of these two findings on Mars. It's extremely risky to draw firm conclusions based on an Earth-comparison system," Mumma said. "I'd like to see the evidence in the paper." Stoker and Lemke also reportedly use recent data by Mars Express of concentration and geographic variation of methane in the Mars atmosphere to reach their conclusion. Mumma, for one, did not buy it. "It's a plausibility argument," he said. "The conclusion that life is present and living in caves on Mars is a little extreme, based on the jarosite and the Earth comparison." Until the methane can be accurately mapped and chemically analyzed, the question about present-day life on Mars will remain unanswered. The next spacecraft heading to Mars will not have the necessary
equipment to do the follow-up methane studies, Mumma said. However,
a sophisticated rover slated for launch in 2009 may be delayed,
leaving an opportunity for launch of a Mars methane mapper.
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