Mars invasion: Gene sequencers and weather stations may be headed to Red Planet

Since the dawn of the space age NASA and other agencies have spent billions of dollars to reconnoiter Mars—assailing it with spacecraft flybys, photo-snapping orbiters and landers nose-diving onto its surface. 

As the search becomes more heated (some would say more desperate), scientists are entertaining an ever-increasing number of possible explanations for Martian biology as a no-show. For example, could there be a “cover up” whereby the harsh Martian environment somehow obliterates all biosignatures—all signs of past or present life? Or perhaps life there is just so alien its biosignatures are simply unrecognizable to us, hidden in plain view.

Of course, the perplexing quest to find life on Mars may have a simple solution: It’s not there, and never was.

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[Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute] advocates making an unprecedentedly robust, high-resolution study of environmental variability on Mars by peppering its surface with weather stations. Sooner or later telltale signs of the possible whereabouts of extant life may emerge from the resulting torrents of data. “Today’s environment on that planet is a reflection of something in the past,” she says, and planting numbers of automated stations on Mars does not need to be expensive.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: The Search for Life on Mars Is about to Get Weird