Proof of life on Mars will come by year-end: NASA expert
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WASHINGTON: Is there life on Mars? The most intriguing question for everyone on the Earth would be answered by American space scientists by the end of this year, a NASA expert has claimed.
According to David McKay, chief of astrobiology at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, the fact that Mars has bred life will be confirmed this year and the historic discovery will not be made on the Mars, but here on Earth using the chunks of the red planet.
"Powerful new microscopes and other instruments will establish whether features in martian meteorites are alien fossils," said McKay.
Using a new instrument, a team of NASA scientists will bombard three meteorites -- known to be from Mars as the gases trapped inside them match those in rocks examined by probes on the red planet -- with a stream of ions to check whether features are geological or biological, Scientific American reported.
Two of the three meteorites - ALH84001 and Yamato 593 - were found in the Antarctic by American and Japanese scientists after they were lying in the icy desert for thousands of years.
Chunks of the third meteorite, which fell at Nakhla in Egypt in 1911, are preserved at London's Natural History Museum.
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