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Organics on the Red Planet


Martian Conundrum Solved: Viking Lander Data Reexamined for Organics

            In 1976, NASA sent two Viking landers to Mars.  They purpose of sending them was to see if life was sustainable on the planet by searching the soil for organic compounds.  These Viking landers used GC/MS instruments to examine the soil.  When scientists were examining the data from the GC/MS, they didn’t find any organics from the Martial soil itself; all that they found was chlorobenzene and dichloromethane which was attributed to terrestrial contamination from cleaning fluids.  This came as a huge surprise to scientists because they completely expected to find organic matter.  Organic compounds should have rained down into mars on meteorites and comets, so it didn’t make sense as to why none were found. 
            In 2008, NASA sent a Phoenix lander.  In the Martian soil, it discovered the salt perchlorate.  This led scientists to believe that in the Viking test samples, the perchlorate must have converted any organic matter into the chlorobenzene that they had detected.  To test this theory, they used information from another rover.  The Curiosity rover used its Sample Analysis at Mars module to test the soil, and it did indeed find organic compounds.  They also re-analyzed the chlorobenzene levels and determined that they were discovered by GC/MS at levels that were too high to have been caused by background contamination which means it must have come from somewhere else.  Because the GC/MS uses heat, the scientists concluded that the perchlorate, in the presence of this heat, must have reacted and pyrolysed any organic compounds to produce the chlorobenzene found. 
            Overall, the conclusions made were that because of the instrument they used, it altered the chemical makeup of the soil.  NASA now knows that there are indeed organic compounds on Mars, and they are one step closer to determining if life is sustainable. 

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