NASA found life on Mars 50 years ago but accidentally killed it, claims scientist

As part of the initial Viking experiments, water was infused with nutrients and radioactive carbon was introduced to the red Martian soil. (File photo)

Alien life was discovered on Mars 50 years ago, but NASA destroyed it unintentionally, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, astrobiology professor and faculty member at the Technical University Berlin, has claimed.

Before launching Curiosity rover, NASA had started the Viking programme in the mid-1970s and sent two landers to the Martian surface. The mission not only managed to offer the first glimpses of the Martian surface but also performed a biological analysis of its soil to check for signs of life.

As per Schulze-Makuch, the mission's findings contained several geological formations consistent with the effects of water. Additionally, the Martian volcanoes and their slopes bore close resemblances to those in Hawaii -hinting at their previous exposure to rain.

The Viking landers had also identified tiny amounts of chlorinated organics which were initially believed to be contamination from Earth but the subsequent missions have confirmed the presence of native organic compounds on Mars in a chlorinated form, the scientist wrote in a column in Big Think.

As part of the initial Viking experiments, water was infused with nutrients and radioactive carbon was introduced to the red Martian soil. According to the hypothesis, if there were potential microorganisms on Mars, they would use the nutrients and release radioactive carbon as a gas. But while initial results indicated this radioactive gas's emission, the remaining results remained inconclusive.

Schulze-Makuch pointed out that this exercise might have overwhelmed these potential microbes, leading to their demise.

"Since Earth is a water planet, it seemed reasonable that adding water might coax life to show itself in the extremely dry Martian environment. In hindsight, it is possible that approach was too much of a good thing," he added.

"Perhaps the putative Martian microbes collected for the labelled release experiments couldn’t deal with that amount of water and died off after a while... It would be as if an alien spaceship were to find you wandering half-dead in the desert, and your would-be saviours decide, 'Humans need water. Let’s put the human in the middle of the ocean to save it!' That wouldn’t work either," he explained.

The scientist then called for a new mission to Mars dedicated primarily to life detection to test this hypothesis and others.

Read more: Why 4 volunteers will stay locked in NASA's virtual Mars simulation for over a year