![]() NASA hosted meetings as far back as 1959 to debate the necessity of sterilizing whatever might be sent to other worlds. ![]() Since the dawn of the space age, scientists have seriously debated the threat of biological contamination of other worlds. Opinion The patriarchal race to colonize Mars is just another example of male entitlement ![]() Almost certainly, any such modern Martians that might exist are no more advanced than bacteria. Our rovers and landers - Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, Insight and Mars 2020 - are a decades-long program to robotically explore Mars to search for both signs of ancient life and evidence for living, breathing Martians. Descendants of those ancient Martians might still be living off subsurface sources of water and the energy that flows upward from the rocks deep inside the planet. Thus, life on Mars, if it existed at all, would have sought safe havens in caves and underground. The atmosphere also slowly lost the ability to protect the surface from dangerous radiation from space. As some of the atmosphere of Mars slowly trickled off into space, the atmosphere grew thin and cold, and the large bodies of liquid water that once covered much of Mars disappeared from the surface. On a warm and wet Mars with a hearty atmosphere - as it was several billion years ago - life could have flourished on, above and below the Martian surface. Our curiosity about our neighbor is understandable: Mars is the closest place in the universe where extraterrestrial life might exist.
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