NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has failed to find any evidence that Mars is supporting life, Daily Mail reported Sunday.
The car-sized Curiosity rover has roamed the surface of Mars for a year in search of methane, a gas that is produced by living things. The laser scanning showed the Red Planet has not detected any.
Not finding the gas means that it is unlikely that microbes capable of producing the gas are living below the planet's surface, scientists said.
NASA said that they had high hopes that the rover would inhale methane after orbiting spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes detected plumes of the gas several years ago.
On Earth, most of the gas is a by-product of life, spewed when animals digest or plants decay, which is considered a sign of life, according to the agency.
"Every time we looked, we never saw it," said Christopher Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the research published online in the journal Science.
Webster said while the result was "disappointing in many ways," the hunt for the elusive gas continues.
The car-sized Curiosity rover has roamed the surface of Mars for a year in search of methane, a gas that is produced by living things. The laser scanning showed the Red Planet has not detected any.
Not finding the gas means that it is unlikely that microbes capable of producing the gas are living below the planet's surface, scientists said.
NASA said that they had high hopes that the rover would inhale methane after orbiting spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes detected plumes of the gas several years ago.
On Earth, most of the gas is a by-product of life, spewed when animals digest or plants decay, which is considered a sign of life, according to the agency.
"Every time we looked, we never saw it," said Christopher Webster of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the research published online in the journal Science.
Webster said while the result was "disappointing in many ways," the hunt for the elusive gas continues.
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