Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Manoj Kumar
In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 mission deployed two spacecraft to investigate Mars and search for signs of life. Experiments conducted on Martian soil aimed to detect life by adding water and nutrients, assuming that liquid water was essential for life, similar to Earth.
Early results from Viking experiments hinted at potential signs of life, sparking excitement. However, over time, researchers dismissed the findings as false positives, attributing them to chemical reactions rather than biological activity.
Credit : NASA
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist from Technische Universität Berlin, proposes that the Viking landers might have encountered Martian microbes but unintentionally destroyed them by overwhelming their environment with water.
Schulze-Makuch suggests that potential Martian microbes may have adapted to hyperacid conditions by relying on hygroscopic salts—compounds that absorb moisture from the atmosphere—similar to microorganisms in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
The researcher likens this to an incident in the Atacama Desert, where torrential rains killed 70–80% of native bacteria that couldn’t adapt to an excess of water. He theorizes that a similar reaction might have occurred on Mars.
The hypothesis challenges NASA’s focus on liquid water as a prerequisite for life. Schulze-Makuch advocates for targeting Martian salts, such as sodium chloride, that could sustain life in briny or arid conditions.
Nearly 50 years after the Viking missions, Schulze-Makuch emphasizes the need for updated life-detection missions using modern methods and a better understanding of Mars’ extreme environment.
The results of this observation were detailed in the MWhile acknowledging the speculative nature of his hypothesis, Schulze-Makuch stresses the importance of using multiple independent methods to detect life on Mars, reigniting debates about the Viking missions and the potential for microbial life on the Red Planet.onthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, contributing to ongoing research into the dynamic interactions of galaxies.