Telegraph:
Researchers at Imperial College London have determined that
life could not exist on the surface of Mars because of a super
drought that lasted hundreds of millions of years, writes Nick
Collins for the
Telegraph. Experts spent three years studying
individual soil particles collected in 2008 by NASA's
Phoenix spacecraft. Despite a warmer and wetter period
in Mars's distant past, the 5000 years or so that it lasted was
simply too brief for life to have established itself on the
surface. "Future NASA and ESA [European Space Agency] missions
that are planned for Mars will have to dig deeper to search for
evidence of life, which may still be taking refuge
underground," said Tom Pike, lead author of a
paper
published in
Geophysical Research Letters.
