NASA's Viking missions to Mars may have discovered evidence for life on the Red Planet after all, according to scientists who are seeking to correct what they believe to be a 50-year-old mistake that has led everybody to think that Mars is lifeless.
Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed on Mars in 1976. On board they carried three life-detection experiments, which produced positive results. But the apparent failure of another instrument, the Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer (GC-MS), to detect organic molecules necessary for life led Viking Project Scientist Gerald Soffen to conclude, "No bodies, no life."
