New research suggests NASA will have to dig deeper on Mars or seek out different targets in its quest to find evidence of ancient life on the planet.
A team of NASA scientists has suggested that Mars rovers may have to dig deeper than first thought to give them the best chance of finding evidence of ancient microbial life on the distant planet.
“Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought,” said Alexander Pavlov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Current Mars rover missions drill down to about 2 inches . At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely.”
The scientists’ findings suggest that martian rock samples will have to be extracted from a depth of about 6.6 feet , where any such evidence should remain intact. A workaround suggested by the scientists involves extracting samples from exposed outcrops such as microcraters that are less than 10 million years old, or from the material ejected by impacts involving these craters.
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