In all our explorations of Mars to date, no evidence has been found that meets the rigorous standards to claim that we have conclusively found life. But, decades ago in the 1970s, when the Viking landers became the first US mission to safely land on and ...

Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch believes Nasa's Viking missions have inadvertently 'eliminated' Martian life. He also mentioned that Martian life may have adapted to the planet's dry environment

The 1976 Viking landers were the first U.S. missions to land on Mars, conducting the only experiments dedicated to detecting biosignatures in Martian soil.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch is a scientist who thinks NASA's Viking landers could have inadvertently destroyed the life they were searching for. In this Q&A, we ask why.

Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch from the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany believes that humans may have unintentionally killed all life on Mars in the 1970s. NASA's Viking 1 mission in 1975 saw two spacecraft land on the Red Planet's surface and conduct an experiment involving mixing water and nutrients with collected soil samples.

NASAs Viking missions sought life on Mars in the 1970s, but new insights suggest their methods might have unintentionally destroyed potential Martian microbes.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch believes NASA's Viking 1 may have harmed potential Martian life through its water-based detection methods.