'These missions failed to detect organics, setting lower limits on the presence of organics at very low values,' Stoker said. Similar instruments were also carried on previous NASA Mars landers, the Viking and Phoenix spacecraft. 'Curiosity has the ability to detect organic compounds,' said Carol Stoker, a staff planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center.

Some scientists don't doubt whether Curiosity is up for the job. We still would have the alternative of searching for them in the ground ice, and perhaps in other substrates such as surface evaporates.' If Curiosity does not find organics, Davila said: 'This would strongly suggest that neither the dry soils nor the ancient sediments are good places to preserve organics. We know that similar ground ice on Earth preserves organics and even whole cells for millions of years.' 'One option would be to go back to Gale Crater, although my guess is that whatever organics might be there are very ancient and degraded, or non-biogenic - for example, delivered by meteorites,' Davila said.Īnother choice would be to send those instruments to a site where organics should be better preserved and for longer periods of time, Davila added, 'such as the ground ice at higher latitudes. While Curiosity might provide some clues, Davila said scientists would likely need to send a new set of instruments specifically selected to find 'biomarkers.' A biomarker can be any kind of molecule indicating the existence, past or present, of living organisms. ĭavila told that if or when Curiosity establishes that it has the capability to detect organics near the surface, 'then the focus should turn to understanding the nature and the origin of those organics, and to establish whether they are linked to life.' He is a principal investigator at the Carl Sagan Center for the Search of Life in the Universe.

'In my opinion the turning point in the search for life on Mars would be if Curiosity finds organics,' said Alfonso Davila, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. Curiosity is about 20 feet (6 meters) from its landing site, now named Bradbury Landing.

22, 2012, the rover made its first move, going forward about 15 feet (4.5 meters), rotating 120 degrees and then reversing about 8 feet (2.5 meters). This 360-degree panorama shows evidence of a successful first test drive for NASA's Curiosity rover.

Mars by Leonard David