Space & Astronomy

Alien life may still survive on Mars in area deep beneath the ground

By T.K. Randall
December 3, 2024 ·  2 comments

Is there life deep beneath the surface of Mars ? Image Credit: NASA / JPL For decades, scientists have been attempting to determine if alien life does (or ever did) exist on the Red Planet - a place that, in the distant past, was a lot more like the Earth with rivers and oceans of liquid water and an environment that was far more hospitable than it is today.

NASA has sent several rovers to explore the Martian surface and these have consistently found tantalizing signs that Mars could have once supported primitive alien life forms.

Direct evidence of actual organisms, however, has so far proven elusive.

Now, though, a new study has highlighted what could be the most promising place to look for alien life on Mars today - a subsurface region that lies between 4.3 and 8.8 kilometers beneath a vast and ancient plain known as Acidalia Planitia.This particular subsurface zone is believed to have the right conditions to support life, including shelter from the harsh surface conditions, residual geothermal heat and traces of water.

It's also quite a large area - the plain itself stretches over 3,000km across.

To find life there, however, it would be necessary to send a rover or lander capable of drilling down several kilometers and retrieving samples to study.

This makes the region a tantalizing target for future missions to the Red Planet.

"The subsurface of the southern Acidalia Planitia is a putative target region for hosting cold-adapted Methanosarcinaceae-like and/or Methanomicrobiaceae-like methanogens," the study authors wrote.

Source: NDTV.com | Comments (2)

Tags: Mars