Given Mars is the closest planet to ours, scientists have long researched the Martian surface. NASA has a handful of active missions on the Red Planet at any given time to either find if microbial life currently exists on the celestial body or, at the very least, existed at some point in the distant past. In a new video from the space agency, NASA astrobiologist Heather Graham reiterates the outfit has yet to find any sign of ancient life on Mars.
“We’re just now getting instruments onto the Martian surface that can help us understand these potentially habitable places and we can ask deeper questions about the potential for habitability in those rock cores,” Graham said in the video, which you can watch below. “We’ve been looking for life on Mars for a long time.”
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“And while NASA hasn’t found any evidence of life now, we’ve found lots of evidence that Mars could have supported life in the past,” Graham added. “There are lots of pieces of evidence that say there was once a huge ocean on Mars and an atmosphere that could have supported life.”
Last November, a study published from researchers at Penn State University revealed evidence of a massive ocean once existed on the planet, meaning there’s an increased possibility microbial life was once found on Mars.
“What immediately comes to mind as one the most significant points here is that the existence of an ocean of this size means a higher potential for life,” astronomer Benjamin Cardenas said in the study, recently published inย the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. “It also tells us about the ancient climate and its evolution. Based on these findings, we know there had to have been a period when it was warm enough and the atmosphere was thick enough to support this much liquid water at one time.”
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