Washington: Hopes of finding life on Mars had a setback after new findings from Nasa’s Curiosity rover detected only trace amounts of methane gas in the Red Planet’s atmosphere, a study said on Thursday.In the past decade, scientists have reported large “plumes” of methane in the Martian atmosphere, findings that have remained controversial because they were made on the basis of observations from Earth or an orbiting satellite.
Researchers said in March 2003 that they had found a cloud near the Martian equator containing some 19,000 tonnes of methane, considered a key indicator of microbial life.
However, analysis of data from Curiosity’s onboard instruments shows only trace amounts of methane in Mars’s atmosphere.
