NASA scientist’s experiment to find out if Mars ever had life in the past

WASHINGTON - An experiment proposed by a NASA scientist has been added to the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on a mobile NASA laboratory that will land on Mars in 2012, which would help find if there was life on the Red Planet in the ancient times.

The experiment has been suggested by Jennifer Eigenbrode, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Mars was a lot different 3-1/2 billion years ago. It was more like Earth with liquid water,” said Eigenbrode.

“Maybe life existed back then. Maybe it has persisted, which is possible given the fact that we’ve found life in every extreme environment here on Earth. If life existed on Mars, maybe it adapted very much like life adapted here,” she added.

The newly added experiment will enhance SAM’s ability to analyze large carbon molecules if the mission is fortunate enough to find any.

The mission, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, will be checking whether a carefully chosen area of Mars has ever had an environment favorable for the development of life and preservation of evidence about life.

The mission’s car-sized rover will analyze dozens of samples scooped from soil and drilled from rocks.

None of the rover’s 10 instruments is designed to identify past or present life, but SAM has a key role of checking for carbon-containing compounds that potentially can be ingredients or markers of life.

Eigenbrode secured the flight opportunity for her experiment after successfully proving in a series of tests earlier this year that the combination of heat and a specific chemical would significantly enhance SAM’s ability to analyze large carbon molecules.

In particular, Eigenbrode’s experiment will provide far more details about the evolution of large organic molecules that are made up of smaller molecules such as carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids - should SAM find them.

“Our experiment preserves information on how these molecules formed,” she said.

“What we’ll get are key observations that tell us about organic carbon sources and processing on Mars - shedding light on the planet’s carbon cycle,” she added.

Equipped with a gas chromatograph, a quadruple mass spectrometer, and a tunable laser spectrometer, SAM will carry out the initial search for organic compounds when the Mars Science Laboratory lands in 2012. (ANI)