Is there life on Mars? That is a question a group of scientists are asking, and they have started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise funds for a new life-finding mission on the red planet.
The mission is ExoLance, and although independent from NASA, includes several NASA scientists, including one involved with NASA's current Curiosity mission. These scientists feel frustration that most present missions only involve finding out if the red planet can sustain life: they want to hunt for actual life on the planet instead.
"While current NASA missions are looking for evidence of past life, no NASA mission is planned to look for current life," says ExoLance on their Indiegogo page. "We believe this is a mistake. To find life on Mars, we actually need to look for life on Mars."
Scientists already believe that Mars has elements, like water, that support life, so ExoLance wishes to look for that life by penetrating deep into Martian soil and searching for signs of microbes.
The ExoLance team believes that small probes, which they call arrows, could be shot into the surface of Mars, penetrate deep enough where such microbes might live, leaving a portion of the probe above the surface so that it can transmit data on its findings to an accompanying orbiter. The idea is that the probes would be combined with an upcoming mission, perhaps NASA's Mars 2020 project.
ExoLance is similar to the idea British scientists had for penetrating the icy surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Europa has massive amounts of ocean beneath its top icy layer, and scientists believe it's a good candidate for hosting life. A future mission there involves possibly firing bullet-shaped probes at the moon that would dig deep into Europa's surface and search for life.
The Indiegogo campaign for ExoLance is asking for $250,000 for building prototypes for testing in the Mojave Desert. The next phase after that, which will require a much greater deal of money, will involve creating the instruments for detecting life.
"Once the concept is sufficiently tested and we have proven the viability of the mission concept, we will approach NASA, other space agencies, and potential commercial providers to carry ExoLance on one or more future Mars missions," says the scientific team.
If ExoLance succeeds, we may finally have an answer to the age-old question of whether life exists on Mars.
