Life on Mars? NASA thinks they know where to look

By Dean Murray via SWNS

Space scientists think there could be life of Mars - and they know exactly where to look.

A new NASA study proposes microbes could find a potential home beneath frozen water on the planet’s surface.

Images from the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show white edges along gullies that are believed to be dusty water ice.

Scientists think meltwater could form beneath the surface of this kind of ice, providing a place for possible photosynthesis.

“If we’re trying to find life anywhere in the universe today, Martian ice exposures are probably one of the most accessible places we should be looking,” said the paper’s lead author, Aditya Khuller of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The study suggests that dusty ice lets in enough light for photosynthesis to occur as deep as 9 feet (3 meters) below the surface. In this scenario, the upper layers of ice prevent the shallow subsurface pools of water from evaporating while also providing protection from harmful radiation. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a protective magnetic field to shield it from both the Sun and radioactive cosmic ray particles zipping around space.

The paper's authors say the water ice that would be most likely to form subsurface pools would exist in Mars’ tropics, between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude, in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Researchers are beginning to map out the most likely spots on the Red Planet to look for shallow meltwater — locations that could be scientific targets for possible human and robotic missions in the future.

Aditya Khuller hopes to re-create some of Mars’ dusty ice in a lab to study it up close.