One of my central premises of my plan to create a colony on Mars is that we first have to find if there is life on Mars.

If there is life on Mars we might want to take steps to protect it. While I doubt that our tiny colonies on Mars would have a hugely deleterious effect on Martian life it is possible and we should know. It would be profound and if it exists and we kill it that would be quite a black mark on the human race.

What I suggest is that on the first 3 missions to Mars we land 3 super-rovers each similar to the 2020 rover NASA is about to launch next year but scaled up. That is 9 rovers. Building these rovers in bulk would lead to massively lower costs and a large part of the cost anyway is getting there.

These 9 rovers would be robotic and semi-autonomous. They would be made to be upgradeable. They would coincide with us launching a GPS system of 10 satellites around Mars that would give precise location of the rovers and anything they discover.

The rovers would serve many functions. I will talk about that a little later.

Mars does have life

In the 1970’s one of the Viking probe sent to Mars produced contradictory evidence of life on Mars. Scientists ended up discounting it as not being sufficient and possibly an artifact of the experiment but what they found was that when water was placed in Mars material methane production spiked in a way similar to what you would expect for bacterium to produce.

Methane is a gas that naturally would burn away from the Martian atmosphere in a short period of time. Therefore, Methane should not be found on Mars surface or its atmosphere.

The Vikings experiments looked at Mars soil without water and it also sterilized and then poured water on the soil to see if it produced Methane. All the experiments acted as if life was present in the soil but other experiments that looked for presence of carbon atoms or evidence of life in other ways was negative so the experimenters called the experiment anomalous and discounted it as signs of life.

There has always been doubt though if Viking did discover life.

Today the Martian probe that remains alive on Mars Curiosity rover has detected a seasonal variation of Methane in Mars atmosphere. It has reached a peak level and it is summer on Mars.

A seasonal variation in Methane isn’t expected. Again no methane is expected but if there is methane they expect it would not necessarily be seasonal.

So, now recent detection of Methane brings into question Vikings experiments again. Frankly, it is surprising to me that Curiosity doesn’t have an experiment similar to the Viking but the 2020 Rover does have one.

The 2020 Rover

The NASA 2020 Rover is a much more robust rover than Opportunity which has died now and Curiosity which is on its last legs.

The 2020 Rover has much more powerful thermal nuclear power supply that can last 30 maybe even 40 years or more. It will power much faster engine and wheels that are built to be much stronger than the crumpling Opportunity wheels. The Martian soil is difficult on materials.

Besides more and sustained power the 2020 Rovers will have many new experiments. It can detect life. It can map below the surface using a microwave sounding instrument up to 500 feet in less than an inch gradation the density of materials.

These experiments will help us answer fundamental questions and be able to rove over much larger surface of Mars. The current rovers go up to 3 mph. The new rovers can hit 10mph.

The Mathon 2025 Rover

I propose a rover upgraded with 2 thermo nuclear cells for higher power, redundancy, more speed and more autonomous operation.

The 2025 Rover will have upgraded life sensing capability, upgraded scanning and digging tools. It will also have GPS mapping and 4K VR cameras mounted for continuous recording.

It will also bring explosives. We have found one of the best ways to dig is simply to explode the soil. Munitions would be dropped on strategic locations to determine if there was something to see below the surface.

I propose 9 rovers to operate continuously over the surface of Mars eventually completely covering the planet and going close to the poles. In the process with their 360 degree VR cameras beaming back ultra high definition video combined with highly accurate GPS coordinates we will be able to produce a Google Mars equivalent.

The purpose of this VR data and GPS is to make future traversal of Mars much easier, be able to locate interesting geologic and mineral deposits.

The purpose of the mission is mostly in my mind to find life if it exists anywhere on the planet. As I said above I think this is a required step.

However, clearly by having the mapping and resource data and the VR imagery we can construct an incredibly detailed map of the resources potentially on Mars, the location of underground water pools or metals and other minerals of interest. This will be useful for future utilization and to decide where to place a colony or colonies.

I believe the 360 VR imagery will be critical to maintaining Earth side interest in the project to colonize mars. I can imagine everybody in the world will want to don VR glasses and put themselves on Mars and see the heights of the largest mountain which is 50% higher than Everest. We will be able to see the biggest canyon more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon on Earth. We will be able to see sinkholes or other incredible sights and walk around as if we were on Mars.

What will be missing is sound or temperature or smell but those are not likely to exist anyway on Mars like on Earth. The lack of a significant atmosphere and radiation levels makes the ambient environment toxic for humans.

What is this life like likely to be like?

On Earth we divide life into several levels of complexity. The simplest life is in the form of a virus or prion. These forms of life are simply segments of DNA. They do not have independent means of reproduction, they do not consume supplies independently. They don’t move of their own volition.

Their critical ability is to pierce the barrier of a cell (bacterium) and attach themselves to a cell’s existing DNA and then use the cell and its resources to do its operation and to produce what it does and to reproduce.

Thus I am not sure virus’s could exist without cells so life probably started with something that didn’t have DNA. We assume all life has something like DNA to promote evolution. The critical feature is simply to reproduce. However, reproduction without evolution would mean that any chance event could destroy the life.

The fact that if life exists on Mars it has been there for a long time implies it has to have some evolutionary capability and it must have the functions necessary to traverse, ingest nutrients, excrete waste, reproduce and evolve in some way.

It will be fascinating if we find life on Mars if it is derivative of the Earth or vice versa or it is entirely new starting point.

The mere fact that there may be life would be by itself worth spending billions and billions not because the life itself would be worth it but that understanding what it is, how it works will have incredible consequences for us in many ways.

Summary

The question of life on Mars has become more relevant. I believe there is a 90% chance there is actual microbial life on Mars. The existence of variation in methane being the primary evidence so far.

If life exists on Mars we should study it. We should understand what it needs and try to figure out the history of life on Mars. Does it have genes? Has it evolved and what from? How do we preserve it? Where is it prominently located?

We need to temper our plans for conquering mars if it contains life. It will affect how we decide to move forward longer term but it could also become a focus of initial activity of humans on Mars too.

The existence of a second form of life on a planet so close to Earth would have a tremendous impact on our values in the Drake equation and help us figure out likely places for life in the more proximate parts of the galaxy that we might seek to probe. It might make the possibility of life on other bodies in our solar system far more likely.

Mars and Earth exchange about 30 pounds of material per year. Over millions of years a lot of stuff has been ejected from Mars and from Earth going back and forth. This is mainly a result of asteroid strikes. This means there is a significant likelihood of contamination of Mars from Earth. For all we know it is the contamination from Mars to Earth that started life on Earth? We don’t know. It is truly a paradigm shifting event if we find life close to us.

My 2025 missions to Mars are described in my Mars series on colonizing the planet. These are located here. You can find a summary of my plan in various parts of the series on Space Policy.