no smoking gun but is full of evidence that supports the existence of life on the surface of Mars, or in subsurface water pools, early in the planet's history. The new data are expected to be addressed publicly within days by NASA Headquarters in Washington, where they could become part of the political debate on future NASA mission directions.

The Allen Hills Meteorite. Credit: NASA



The findings have already emerged within the scientific community in the form of an extremely detailed 46-page paper provided to Spaceflight Now on new Mars life findings. The document is part of the November issue of the respected journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the Geochemical and Meteoritic Society. Its authors are Kathie Thomas-Keprta, Simon Clement, David McKay (who led the original team),Everett Gibson and Susan Wentworth, all of the Johnson Space Center. Keprta is the principal author. Although led by a Johnson Space Center team, the additional evidence for Martian life in the Allen Hills meteorite has been an open topic for the last several weeks in astrobiology division halls at the NASA Ames Research Center near San Francisco and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. It's hot news. The new work centers on so-called magnetic bacteria that on Earth, and apparently Mars as well, leave distinctively-shaped remnants in the rock. In addition the features test with a high chemical purity more like a biological feature than geological. These are just like the magnetite-related life forms found in the meteorite believed to represent Martian life forms, says Dr. Dennis