Science

Humans could accidentally destroy life on Mars. Scientist

In the 1970s, NASA 's Viking probes were launched to explore Mars. Recently, astrobiologists have speculated that these probes could detect Martian microorganisms and then inadvertently destroy them. Новая наука  writes about this.
As the publication notes, these statements, based on the analysis of the results of the "Viking" experiments, mean that life on Mars could have been discovered much earlier than we thought, and cast doubt on the methods of space exploration. According to Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at the Technical University of Berlin, NASA may have discovered life on Mars without even knowing it. The Viking probes that landed on the Red Planet in 1976 could test for tiny drought-resistant life forms hidden in Martian rocks. These life forms, if they existed, would have been destroyed by probe experiments before they could be identified.
The Viking did find signs of life, but those signs were misinterpreted at the time. Schulze-Makuch expressed serious concern about the methods used in the experiments. In his opinion, using too much water in these tests can be counterproductive. To back up his words, he cites specific land conditions, particularly the Atacama Desert in Chile. This environment, one of the driest on the planet, is home to microbes that have developed unique survival mechanisms. These organisms find shelter in so-called "hygroscopic" rocks, which are capable of absorbing moisture directly from the air, even in very small amounts. If such microbes lived on Mars, the penetration of large amounts of water, as happened during the Viking experiments, could be fatal for them. 

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