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December 9, 2025<\/p>\n
4 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Human Missions to Mars Must Search for Alien Life, New Report Finds<\/p>\n A major new study lays out plans for crewed missions to Mars, with the search for extraterrestrial life being a top priority<\/p>\n By Lee Billings edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n A. Martin UW Photography\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The best reason to send humans to Mars isn\u2019t for guts or glory\u2014or the construction of colonies to safeguard against existential Earth-bound risks. Instead it\u2019s to answer a single, simple question: Is or has there ever been life on Mars?<\/p>\n That\u2019s the upshot of a new report published on Tuesday by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that presents an ambitious, science-centric vision for human missions to the Red Planet\u2014with the search for alien life as their guiding star.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen our astronauts set foot on Mars, it will be one of humanity\u2019s greatest milestones,\u201d says Dava Newman, an aerospace engineer and former director of the MIT Media Lab, who co-chaired the committee behind the report. \u201cAnd finding extant or extinct life on Mars will be the discovery that defines the next century.\u201d<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n The report attempts to bridge the gaps between NASA\u2019s science and its human spaceflight program in pursuit of a common goal, says report co-chair Lindy Elkins-Tanton\u2014a planetary scientist who helms the University of California, Berkeley\u2019s Space Sciences Laboratory, as well as NASA\u2019s Psyche mission. \u201cLearning how to blend these different disciplines is critical to our future as an interplanetary species,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The report lays out an additional 10 science objectives beyond the primary search for life and ranks four potential crewed campaigns, each composed of three sequential missions.<\/p>\n The highest-ranking campaign suggests targeting an as-yet-unselected, geologically diverse 100-kilometer-wide \u201cexploration zone\u201d rich with near-surface glacial ice, where signs of past or present life might be found. That project would involve astronauts initially staying on Mars for 30 sols (Martian days). This period would then be followed by an uncrewed cargo delivery and, finally, a 300-sol-long crewed mission.<\/p>\n The other campaigns would be slightly smaller in scope but audacious nonetheless. Two would involve building and operating drilling rigs on Mars, with one campaign proposing to drill as far down as five kilometers to reach subsurface regions where potentially life-bearing liquid water might exist. The lowest-ranked campaign deviates from the others in that it would see astronauts mount a series of shorter surface forays of 30 sols each at three separate sites across the planet.<\/p>\n All the campaigns propose leveraging \u201chuman-agent teaming\u201d in the form of advanced robotics and software. And all include a \u201cMars surface laboratory\u201d for immediate studies of samples\u2014some of which would be later returned to Earth for deeper analysis.<\/p>\n Such \u201cagents\u201d might range from small autonomous devices to humanoid robots, says report committee member and former NASA astronaut Jim Pawelczyk, now a physiologist at Pennsylvania State University. \u201cTheir exact form will be determined by specific requirements, advances in hardware and artificial intelligence. That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to set the scientific objectives early; they drive subsequent technology development,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Yet, despite the 240-page report\u2019s encyclopedic descriptions of each campaign, it glosses over several issues that are crucial to planning future missions. It doesn\u2019t, for instance, identify specific exploration zones or lay out protocols for maintaining crew health and safety. Nor does it offer any preferred approach for \u201cplanetary protection,\u201d the term for safeguarding against biological cross-contamination between Earth and Mars. (Present planetary protection guidelines would, in fact, prohibit crewed landings anywhere on Mars where liquid water is known to exist.)<\/p>\n These ambiguities are unlikely to be linked solely to the report\u2019s strict focus on science, according to Jim Green, a former chief scientist at NASA and former leader of the agency\u2019s planetary science division, who was not involved in the work. NASA\u2019s budget is a political football, subject to radical shifts as presidents and congressional majorities change. The Trump administration, for instance, has proposed abandoning a NASA-led multibillion-dollar effort to retrieve samples that were already gathered by the agency\u2019s Perseverance rover on Mars. \u201cDue to the slowdown of the Mars robotic exploration program, we just don\u2019t know enough about Mars to select one exploration zone as originally planned,\u201d Green says.<\/p>\n The report also largely avoids the question of how any of its proposals would actually get done. It acknowledges NASA\u2019s preexisting \u201cMoon to Mars strategy\u201d\u2014agency shorthand for the Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface as a precursor for human voyages to the Red Planet\u2014but is agnostic about the timing for future Mars missions and the specific types of rocketry and spacecraft required to achieve them.<\/p>\n \u201cOur frankly gargantuan task was to decide what science should be done by humans\u2014and done best by humans,\u201d Newman says. \u201cThere are going to be so many discoveries and advancements in technology that will be needed for these missions; if we constrained ourselves to the way we can do things now, we wouldn\u2019t be designing the right campaigns for our future,\u201d she adds, noting that the report doesn\u2019t try to outline how to do everything from a technological standpoint.<\/p>\n What is clear, Elkins-Tanton says, is that the moon remains NASA\u2019s next astronautical target, and putting boots on Mars remains firmly in the future. \u201cWe don\u2019t just go to Mars tomorrow,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" December 9, 2025 4 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Human Missions to Mars Must Search for Alien Life, New Report Finds A major new study lays out plans for crewed missions to Mars, with the search for extraterrestrial life being a top priority By Lee Billings edited by Claire Cameron A. Martin UW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2831,189,761,337,369,7968,293,2018],"class_list":{"0":"post-36654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-alien","9":"tag-finds","10":"tag-human","11":"tag-life","12":"tag-mars","13":"tag-missions","14":"tag-report","15":"tag-search"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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