May 14th, 2008

In a few days the Phoenix Spacecraft will land on Mars. I looked up its science mandate which is to "search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there." What, not search for life itself? Why not just scoop up a bit of soil and peer at it through a microscope too? Why not devote a few bits and bobs to look for actual life, and not just a "suitable" environment for it?

Consider this:

There were some experiments carried out by the Viking Mars landers in the mid-1970s that were intended to determine whether or not there was microbial life in the Martian soil. The results were, as far as we know, inconclusive because it is now thought that the mechanism for isolating life would have also killed it. Despite that, there is some limited evidence from those experiments that may point to the existence of microbes in those soil samples, but, alas and alack, the original data has been lost. And what knowledge still exists is ambiguous enough that nobody could state anything with certainty.

I am not crying conspiracy about any of that.

But, since then, NASA has had oodles of opportunities to land probes with better life detection experiments. Instead, it has landed little rovers to wander around and take pictures, drill into rocks, analyze mineral content of said rocks, look for evidence of long gone water, and to study the atmospheric conditions. In addition, an orbiting probe or two has mapped the surface with greater and greater clarity.

Fine.

But I'm wondering why those scientists haven't devoted a few kilos of their total delivery payload to a microbial life test or two. If they came so tantalizingly close with Viking, more than 30 years ago, and if they have recently found some evidence of life from methane emissions that shouldn't be there in the Martian atmosphere, and if they have some indirect evidence that may point to surface water as recently as a few months or years ago, why are they not searching more assiduously for life? Why are they skirting the issue?

OK, now comes my slight case of conspiracy theory:

I think they are milking this one for as much as the American taxpayer will tolerate. They are modern day alchemists crying, "Just one more mission, then we can be ready to really test for it! Don't rush us! We're nearly there! A bit more patience is all we ask! (Oh, and another $750 million too, please)."

I think they don't want this issue resolved any time soon, because they might very well open up unhappy opposition to their Martian missions (and, hence their budget) if life really were found on Mars. People would start screaming, "No! No! Don't land your space junk there! It's undisturbed natural wilderness! Call off your probing, drilling, scooping, and analyzing metallic hounds! You're scaring those little microbes!" And I could easily see politicians jumping on that as a really good reason to suspend—or at least seriously curtail—NASA's budget.

Perhaps NASA doesn't really want to announce evidence of life on Mars, because doing so could very well prevent them from ever going there again—manned or unmanned.

Actually, I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing, considering what's happening over here on Earth ...

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