Setback for finding life on Mars

Hopes of finding life on Mars suffers a setback after NASA’s Curiosity rover detected only trace amounts of methane gas in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. In the past decade, scientists said they found a cloud near the Martian equator containing some 19,000 tons of methane, considered a key indicator of microbial life. But analysis of data from Curiosity’s onboard instruments shows only trace amounts of methane in Mars’s atmosphere. Scientists says Curiosity’s findings indicate the maximum level of methane was about 6 times lower than previous estimates. NASA’s lead scientist for the Mars exploration though did not definitively rule out the possibility of finding life in the planet’s soil following the methane findings. Curiosity, which touched down on the Martian equator in August 2012, already established that Mars may have been hospitable to microbial life in the distant past.

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