To Mars And Beyond

Life on Mars? Elon Musk is more concerned about living there.

- Koh Wanzi

CAN WE BECOME A MULTI-PLANET SPECIES?

Last June, NASA’s Curiosity rover detected surprisingly high amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere. At 21 parts per billion of methane, it was nowhere close to the levels seen on Earth, but it was enough to have people ask the tantalizing question again. Is there life on Mars? On our planet, methane is produced by microbes called methanogens or ruminants like cows. However, it can also stem from geothermal reactions, which have nothing to do with biology or living organisms.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that this isn’t the first time methane has been detected on Mars. In 2013, the Curiosity rover detected a similar spike in methane levels, a finding corroborated by a new analysis of old readings from Mars Express, an orbiting spacecraft built by the European Space Agency. What’s interesting is that these surges in Martian methane appear to be seasonal, following the rhythm of the red planet’s seasons. Furthermore, it only takes a few centuries – a blink of an eye in geologic time – for methane to be broken down by sunlight or chemical reactions, which means that this methane is relatively new.

But as scientists scramble to analyze existing data and collect more precise measurements in order to determine the source of this methane, some of us on Earth are instead looking to take life to Mars itself. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has gone on record as saying that an off-planet colony is humanity’s best hope of coming back from what he thinks is the high possibility of a nuclear war or some other cataclysmic event.

With NASA having fallen so far from the heady rush of the Apollo days and the Moon landing, it often seems like progress in space today is in the hands of billionaires and private space companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.