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You are here: Home / Space / Was There Ever Life On Mars and Why Is Life On Mars a Big Deal To Astronomers?

Was There Ever Life On Mars and Why Is Life On Mars a Big Deal To Astronomers?

April 26, 2020 by Karen Hill

One of the most intriguing, and fanciful, photographs taken of Mars by Voyager 1 showed what appeared to be a mask-like face of a human being buried just under the surface.

Imagine the uproar in the scientific and science fiction communities.

The “face on Mars” turned out to be a purely natural surface formation that, when looked at from other angles, was obviously just a clump of rock and dust.

In 1996, a rock sample from Mars was heralded as bearing signs of life.

While this discovery made great newspaper headlines, it was not news to scientists.

They have known for a long time that evidence for potential life existed “off world.”

Not only does the universe share all the same building blocks of life, we’ve already seen evidence of it fall from the sky.

Remember that the Murchison meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969, contained amino acids, nucleic acids, and cellular chemical compounds, all ingredients of life.

Related Facts

  • How Do We Know If There Is Life On Mars and Why Did Percival Lowell Believe That Martians Built Canals On Mars?
  • When Did the USSR's Mars Program Begin and How Many Mars Program Spacecraft Touched Down On Mars Successfully?
  • When Did NASA's Viking Space Probe Land On the Planet Mars and Did the Viking 2 Lander Find Any Life On Mars?
  • How Much Water Is There On Mars and What Are the Most Prominent Features on the Surface of the Planet Mars?
  • What Is the Atmosphere On Mars Like and How Much Carbon Dioxide Is There On the Planet Mars?
  • How Do Astronomers Measure Really Big Distances and Why Were Astronomical Units Invented To Express Distance?

Filed Under: Space

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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