Methane on Mars

Mars is conventionally described as a cold, lifeless world that’s a giant barren desert, because the surface explorations we’ve made via Mars Rovers pretty much demonstrate that. But NASA’s recently released data about Methane on Mars is providing fodder for excitement, and speculation.

“Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas,” said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, California.”

Scientists using Earth-based telescopes at NASAS’s University of Hawaii site and the W. M. Keck telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawai, with spectrometers attached to them (spectrometers