Tourists take pictures of a NASA sign at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida. REUTERS


NASA has revealed compelling evidence of life on Mars. NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity missions have disclosed signs of sulphates on Mars, which evidently means there could be water on the Red Plant and consequently life.

While previous missions have also suggested the presence of water on Mars, NASA says the recent evidence is more concrete. Boffins are especially excited over the discovery of gypsum - a sulphate found in fossils in the Mediterranean.

Jack Farmer, researcher at the Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona, was "optimistic" there was - or had been - life on Mars. "One, thanks to Opportunity and the rovers and orbital imaging it is clear that there are literally vast areas of Mars that are carpeted with various sorts of sulphates, including gypsum," the Sun quoted Bill Schopf, researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, as saying.

Schopf went on: "Two, it turns out on earth there just hasn''t been hardly any work done at all to show whether gypsum ever includes within it preserved evidence of former life.

An image by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on the NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Gullies at the Edge of Hale Crater (ESP_014153_1430) on Mars recorded during the month of April through early August 2009. REUTERS

"The age doesn''t matter. We just didn''t know that fossils and organic matter and things like that were well preserved within gypsum. "So, three, it turns out that now we have made that first step we are going to find out how widespread it is in other sulphate deposits on earth.

"And those lines of evidence will then give us a way to justify going to Mars and looking at gypsum because it looks as though based on these findings that is going to turn out to be a really excellent place to find evidence of ancient life, regardless of age, if in fact it is there."

According to Dr Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, a sample of Mars rock would help establish the presence of life on the planet. He believes the presence of Methane in the Martian atmosphere hinted at the possibility of life.


NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit recorded this forward view of its arm and surroundings on the rover's 2,052nd Martian day October 11, 2009 in this photograph recently released by NASA. REUTERS

Squyres said: "Methane is a molecule that should go away very quickly. We need to send a mission to find out if the source is biological. "We also need to send a mission to return samples from Mars. That would enable scientists to find out whether Mars might ever have harboured life.

He added: "If we are ever going to show if there was ever life on Mars, I think we''re going to have to study samples back on Earth."

Icy asteroid may offer clues to source of Earth''s water

Scientists analysing ice molecules on an asteroid believe it may be a ''living fossil'' with clues to origin of Earth's oceans. Researchers at the University of Central Florida discovered a thin layer of water ice and organic molecules on the surface of 24 Themis, the largest member of the Themis asteroid family orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

An artist's conception shows what NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed, vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet. REUTERS

Lead author and UCF Physics Professor HumbertoCampins said: "What we''ve found suggests that an asteroid like this one may have hit Earth and brought our planet its water." According to some theories, asteroids brought water to Earth after the planet formed dry.

Scientists say the salts and water that have been found in some meteorites support this view. Using NASA''s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, Campins and his team of researchers measured the intensity of the reflected sunlight as 24 Themis rotated.

Differences in intensity at different wavelengths helped researchers determine the makeup of the asteroid''s surface.Researchers were surprised to find ice and carbon-based compounds evenly distributed on 24 Themis.

This image released by NASA January 21, 2010, from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows a rock called "Marquette Island" that was examined from mid-November 2009 until mid-January 2010. REUTERS

The discovery of ice is unexpected because surface ice should be short lived on asteroids, which are expected to be too warm for ice to survive for long. The distance between this asteroid and the sun is about three times greater than between Earth and the sun.

While scientists will continue testing various hypotheses to explain the presence of ice, the most promising possibility perhaps is that 24 Themis might have preserved the ice in its subsoil, just below the surface, as a kind of "living fossil" or remnant of an early solar system that was generally considered to have disappeared long ago. The findings will appear in the journal Nature.