Viking mission to Mars

[Flyaway]

Yep George Levin has stirred this up again with a new opinion piece in Scientific American.

On July 30, 1976, the LR returned its initial results from Mars. Amazingly, they were positive. As the experiment progressed, a total of four positive results, supported by five varied controls, streamed down from the twin Viking spacecraft landed some 4,000 miles apart. The data curves signaled the detection of microbial respiration on the Red Planet. The curves from Mars were similar to those produced by LR tests of soils on Earth. It seemed we had answered that ultimate question.

When the Viking Molecular Analysis Experiment failed to detect organic matter, the essence of life, however, NASA concluded that the LR had found a substance mimicking life, but not life. Inexplicably, over the 43 years since Viking, none of NASA’s subsequent Mars landers has carried a life detection instrument to follow up on these exciting results. Instead the agency launched a series of missions to Mars to determine whether there was ever a habitat suitable for life and, if so, eventually to bring samples to Earth for biological examination.

I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s

The Labeled Release experiment on the Viking mission reported positive results, although most have dismissed them as inorganic chemical reactions

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Here’s a support article.

The Debate Over Whether We’ve Already Found Life on Mars, Continued

Were Martian microbes inadvertently killed in their first encounter with humans?

www.airspacemag.com

 

[Archibald]

I filled my brain with that controversy some years ago. It goes way beyond Levine who has somewhat sidetracked himself beating his own dead horse. He is only part of a much larger picture.

 

[Flyaway]

Why We May Have Already Found Life On Mars with Dr Patricia Ann Straat:

 

[Flyaway]

 

[Flyaway]

Technical overview of the Viking experiments. Apparently three of the four experiments have now had their results moved into the inconclusive bucket. Shame that Viking put NASA off from any attempt at further direct detections of life.

View: https://youtu.be/2fdmDurPm1o?si=lcPH72JTCN5TDSew

 

[Archibald]

Brief summary of the controversy

- Four life-seeking experiments, by name of their P.Is : Vishniac, Oyama, Horowitz and Levine.

- one additional experiment looking for organic molecules : Biemann. Pyrolisis of soil to look for organics.

So, what happened ? For a start, Vishniac "Wolf trap" lost its flight to Mars due to complexity and budget hassles, 1971. Poor Vishniac carried on, looking for extremophiles in Antarctica. Where he died of a fall, two years later in 12/1973.

Then Viking went to Mars, and tested the soil. End result:
- Horowitz experiment: NO
- Oyama experiment: NO
- Levine experiment: YES ???!!
This is one half of the controversy. The other relates to Biemann: a resounding NO, which was far more disturbing. I mean, organics have been been found all over the solar system and even beyond - but not on Mars surface ? weird.

Biemann however deduced from his results that the solvant used to sterilize Viking... had sterilized his samples, of organics. This became the official conclusion by 1978, but debate kept raging.

To Horowitz, Biemann results confirmed his own, and Oyama. How could Levin pretend to find life, if there are no organics in the first place ?

And thus they got two controversies for the price of one, and Mars exploration stalled for twenty years.

...

Fast forward to 2008 and Phoenix. New soil test, and there - perchlorates. Wait, perchlorates ? ... frack. Perchloates, if pyrolized, instantly destroy organics.

Bottom line: Biemann experiment may have, thanks to the perchlorates, pyrolized the organics it looked for. So the solvant hypothesis was kind of right... but it wasn't NASA at Cape Canaveral, but Mars herself.

 

[astro]

In hindsight it would seem that the Viking landers should have been focused more on understanding martian geology, to provide a better basis for designing life-detection experiments.

NASA now goes to the opposite extreme, sending no life-detection experiments at all to Mars.