Autotrophy on Mars (4): What Next?

Autotrophy on Mars (4): What Next?

What should we do with a 50-year-old life-detection experiment whose signal was real, but whose interpretation remains tangled in false positives, false negatives, and missing follow-up work? This article lays out the unresolved weaknesses in Viking’s HHH carbon-fixation results, then turns the problem into a set of concrete astrobiology challenges—suggesting how Earth-based tests and a modern IMPRESS-style instrument could finally clarify whether Mars once gave us a genuine sign of autotrophic life.
Viking Experiments on Mars: Fixing a Half Century of Mistakes

Viking Experiments on Mars: Fixing a Half Century of Mistakes

Half a century ago, Viking delivered evidence suggesting metabolically active life on Mars, but its legacy was derailed by a mistaken GC–MS interpretation that shaped Mars exploration for decades. This is the firsts article in a series that reexamines Viking’s experiments and results from primary data, shows how they were (mis)interpreted, and that suggests life-finding strategies.