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Washington: It may sound a little weird, but a Nasa probe may have accidentally destroyed organic molecules found on the surface of Mars more than 40 years ago, according to a report by New Scientist
. announced that its robot explorer Curiosity has found organic molecules in rocks formed three billion years ago – a discovery that could indicate that there was life on the red planet at that time.
However, in 1976, the Viking twins of NASA "Because the carbon-rich meteorites, which so often weigh on the red planet, scientists have suspected for decades that organic materials exist on Mars."
"But the researchers were stunned in 1976, when NASA sent two Viking landers to Mars to search for organic compounds for the first time and found absolutely none," the report said Wednesday evening.
"It was just completely unexpected and incoherent." Chris McKay, a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, said that
NASA's Phoenix lander discovered perchlorate, a type of salt used primarily to propel and manufacture fireworks, on Mars in 2008. [19659002] "The discovery of Perchlorate convinced scientists that the Viking landers could have found organic on Mars," notes the report Molecules suspected to have been burned during Viking exploration, the report said.
In a separate study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a team from LATMOS The research center in France revisited the data of the Viking lander.
They found that Viking undercarriages also detected chlorobenzene.
According to Melissa Guzman, a scientist at L Although the results are interesting, the chlorobenzene may be from the material transported by the probe from Earth
but some researchers are convinced.
"This document truly seals the case", Daniel Glavin, astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who was not involved in the study, was reportedly sent to Mars to look for any signs of life and study the physical and magnetic properties of the soil and the atmosphere
. The probes continued their mission until the last transmission to Earth on November 11, 1982 (Viking 1) and April 11, 1980 (Viking 2).
