Life on Mars, from Viking to Curiosity - Issue 57: Communities

After midnight in a sweltering room in Pasadena in July 1976, Viking Mars team members sat hunched around a bulky monotone computer monitor, tensely awaiting the first data from the world's first successful Mars probe lander, the only Mars lander ever specifically designed to detect life. Over the next weeks each of Viking's first life-detection experiments came back with a striking signature. As the data trickled back into the Space Operations Facility, it became clear that carbon dioxide was released when organic compounds were added to Martian soil, though not when the mixture was superheated. This was a life signature, and exactly what had happened with the experiment on Earth. When water was added to the soil, oxygen was released, just as on Earth. The remote probe, panning for life, had found its signature in its first two experiments.