US firm plans to put life-detector on Mars

MUMBAI: A private American space organization, Explore Mars, has announced a new method of detecting life on the Red Planet by employing military technology.

It has devised a simple system capable of being delivered to the Martian surface to detect micro-organisms living on or under the surface.

The mission, codenamed ExoLance, essentially leverages a delivery system originally designed for military purposes. The project, which is very much at the conceptualization stage, envisages use of small, lightweight penetrator probes or arrows.

They will impact the Martian surface, leaving behind a radio transmitter to communicate with an orbiter, and then kinetically burrow to emplace a life-detection experiment one to two meters below the surface.

According to Explore Mars, the system involves a metabolic test that clearly distinguishes non-living chemistry from the chemistry produced by the metabolism of living micro-organisms.

What makes this experiment even more intriguing is that if it detects life, it may also be able to determine whether that life is related to that on earth or is a new strain of life.

The project will combine the experiments of the 1970s Viking landers and the Curiosity rover with bunker-busting weapons technology. A point emphasised by Explore Mars was that while always Nasa is looking for past life on Mars, the private body on the other hand will search for present life.