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Outline

Student’s Name: Simranpreet Kaur Boparai

Student Id: 200484892

Subject: ASTR 101

Professor: Samantha Lawler

3 march 2023
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Possibility of life on Mars outline

A. Definition of “life” - pertains to the significance of living or existence in general (McKay,

2020).

1. Where/what is Mars?

2. What would be significant about finding life on Mars?

3. Why are we investigating life on Mars and not on other planets?

B. Historical context – Mars is the second smallest planet from the solar system, and the fourth

planet from the sun. It is commonly known as the “Red Planet.”

C. Statement of Aim - This report will break down the requirements for

reasonable conditions for life to exist in, and if planet Mars will be able to

offer that.

II. Can Mars support life?

A. Requirements for a planet to support and sustain life – for life to exist there must be presence

of water and oxygen, and this outline affirms the importance of exploring factors and

requirements that give future astronomers a source of new space for life, water and oxygen in

planet Mars (Joseph et al., 2019). Realizing that water is one of the basic parts for life to exist, it

is critical to reveal these puzzles that planet Mars may have in light of the fact that it could

provide future space travelers with another wellspring of oxygen, water and conceivably another

habitable environment. Also, lakes and oceans once covered Mars; hence living organisms

existed too. However, all the water in the seas dried up (McKay, 2020).

B. Evidence that Mars meets life requirement needs – NASA created a spacecraft, called

MAVEN, and sent it to planet Mars to investigate how low attitude of solar winds get through

(Joseph et al., 2019). MAVEN found that solar storms could increase the rate at which particles
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escape by 20 times (Yoshimura, 2019). This shows that Mars once had a magnetic field, which is

now being stripped of its particles. With these findings, we understand that a magnetic field is

needed to contain water present on planets therefore, proves that Mars may have once been able

to sustain water (Joseph et al., 2019). For each piece of evidence you have chosen explain:

1. What was observed?

2. How was it observed?

3. What does the evidence prove?

C. Comparison to Earth conditions – of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is perceived as

the most Earth-like planet: however, its atmosphere is only 0.6% as dense as Earth’s and is

constantly leaking the air it has into space (Yoshimura, 2019).

1. Do conditions that make life to exist on Earth similar to Mars?

2. Can we relate either past or present analogous locations of Earth to that

of Mars?

III. Analogue Studies of life on Mars

A. How researchers are employing simple investigations on EARTH to additionally see

how/where life could get by on the red planet – researchers are using properties found on Erath

to mimic quality of interest to examine Mars. For each of two different studies that use Earth

analogues to study Mars:

1. Identify the name of the paper and researcher

2. What is the hypothesis drawn in the paper?

3. If any, what are the implications of each researcher?

4. What are the characteristics that make Mars analogous to Earth?

5. What did researchers observe?

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B. The significance of finding life on Mars - The significance of finding life is

not only expanding our knowledge, but it might also offer living organisms more space for

living, and in the end, more resources that contribute to better living conditions.

IV. Conclusions

A. Summary - Although containing comparable physical properties as Earth, it does not

exactly have the same characteristics. However, by looking at signs like the frozen water

underneath ice caps present on Mars, scientists can hypothesize that there may have once

been life, but was not maintained to this day in time.

References

Joseph, R. G., Dass, R. S., Rizzo, V., Cantasano, N., & Bianciardi, G. (2019). Evidence of

Life on Mars?. Journal of Astrobiology and Space Science Reviews, 1, 40-81.

McKay, C. P. (2020). What Is Life—and When Do We Search for It on Other Worlds.

Astrobiology, 20(2), 163-166.

Yoshimura, Y. (2019). The Search for Life on Mars. In Astrobiology (pp. 367-381).

Springer, Singapore.