New Study Reveals Why There Is No Life on Mars

A recent study, based on findings by NASA’s Curiosity rover, suggests that although Mars once hosted some rivers, it was ultimately destined to remain a dry, lifeless planet.

Despite containing most of the elements necessary to support life, the Red Planet lacks one essential component: liquid water.

Its surface shows evidence of ancient riverbeds and lakes, proof that water once flowed there. This year, the Curiosity rover identified a key element in the ongoing search: rock formations rich in carbonate minerals.

These carbonates, similar to the limestone found on Earth, act as natural sponges for carbon dioxide, which is absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in the rock. A study recently published in the scientific journal Nature precisely models the role these formations may have played in Mars’s climatic history.

Scientist Edwin Kite, from the University of Chicago and a member of the Curiosity rover team, told AFP that at certain times and places on the planet, there were “flashes of habitability.” However, he emphasized that these “oases” were brief and exceptional events.

According to the study, the periods during which liquid water existed on the Martian surface were followed by long intervals—lasting up to one hundred million years—during which Mars remained a barren desert, an environment too hostile to support any form of life.

Nevertheless, Kite does not rule out the possibility that pockets of liquid water may still exist beneath the surface, yet to be discovered. The Perseverance rover, which landed in 2021 in an ancient river delta, has also detected signs of carbonates along the shore of a dried-up lake.

However, to conclusively confirm Mars’s geological and climatic history, it will be necessary to analyze samples brought back to Earth—an objective that both the United States and China aim to achieve within the next decade.