Since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, NASA has known that the planet contains complex organic molecules that indicate it may have once hosted alien life .<\/p>\n
But a new report by New Scientist suggests that Curiosity may not have been the first rover to find evidence of life on Mars.<\/p>\n
The report suggests that during the 1970s, NASA\u2019s Viking mission may have also found evidence of complex organic matter.<\/p>\n
However, the report indicates that the remote-controlled rover may have unknowingly burnt the traces of matter discovered.<\/p>\n
This idea is based on the fact that NASA\u2019s Phoenix Lander, which was on Mars ten years ago, discovered perchlorate – a toxic compound.<\/p>\n
While this compound is highly flammable on Earth, it\u2019s cool on Mars, so has little opportunity to burn.<\/p>\n
Back in the 1970s, the Viking rover heated samples of Martian soil to 500 degrees – a temperature hot enough to have burned the perchlorate, alongside complex organic molecules.<\/p>\n
The NASA researchers believe that this issue may have been discovered after Phoenix\u2019s data came to light.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Curiosity found organic molecules, as well as chlorobenzene molecules, which are produced when carbon reacts with perchlorate.<\/p>\n
This indicates that the Viking lander may have discovered the organic molecules back in the 1970s, but accidentally burned them.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NASA may have burned possible evidence of life on Mars during a pioneering mission to explore the Red Planet 40 years ago, it has sensationally been claimed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,118,167,14],"tags":[78036,78035,13126,60821],"class_list":["post-61351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-hot","category-technology","category-world","tag-allien","tag-mars-life","tag-nasa","tag-red-planet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}