Mars rovers may have to dig deeper to find signs of ancient life. New research shows that certain proteinbuilding amino acids that could be evidence of ancient life on Mars are more susceptible to radiation than scientists thought, meaning any amino acids left by life-forms might have only survived if they were buried deep beneath the planet’s surface. “Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in the Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought,” Alexander Pavlov, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said. “Current Mars rover missions drill down to about two inches (around five centimetres). At those depths, it would take only 20 million years to destroy amino acids completely.”
The research suggests that rovers aren’t digging deep enough beneath the Martian surface to discover signs of life
© NASA/JPL-Caltech; ESO