Mars 'once home to alien lifeforms' as NASA makes bombshell Red Planet discovery (2025)

Aliens could once have been living on Mars after scientists made a bombshell discovery while drilling on the Red Planet. The NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover squad are buzzing

Mars could have “once been home to alien lifeforms” as NASA makes a bombshell Red Planet discovery - and experts have even said “the planet was habitable”.

The NASA's Curiosity rover has sniffed out signs of a carbon cycle beneath the dusty surface of the Red Planet, edging boffins closer to cracking the cosmic conundrum that Mars once had the ability to harbour alien life.

Scientists have hustled pieces of evidence together to figure out the climate history and past habitability of ancient Mars. The ground-breaking study published in the journal Science, revealed that samples from the NASA rover drill sites contained siderite - an iron carbonate mineral extracted from Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, Mars.

"The discovery of large carbon deposits in Gale Crater represents both a surprising and important breakthrough in our understanding of the geologic and atmospheric evolution of Mars," said study lead Dr Ben Tutolo, from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Dr Tutolo, who's part of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover squad, said hitting this rock layer during drilling was a major goal for the mission.

The doctor said: "The abundance of highly soluble salts in these rocks and similar deposits mapped over much of Mars has been used as evidence of the 'great drying' of Mars during its dramatic shift from a warm and wet early Mars to its current, cold and dry state."

Scientists have long suspected that sedimentary carbonate is formed under the carbon dioxide-rich conditions of ancient Mars – but these elusive formations have been tough to pin down, until now.

Experts are intrigued over the new evidence, which hints at a past where enough carbon dioxide was present to support the existence of liquid water on the surface. As Mars' atmosphere dwindled away, this CO2 packed its bags and solidified into rocky formations.

According to Dr Tutolo, scientists are on a mission to find out if Mars could have ever been a cosy spot for life. His team's recent study edges them ever so closer to solving this cosmic riddle.

"It tells us that the planet was habitable and that the models for habitability are correct," he said. "The broader implications are the planet was habitable up until this time, but then, as the CO2 that had been warming the planet started to precipitate as siderite, it likely impacted Mars' ability to stay warm.

"The question looking forward is how much of this CO2 from the atmosphere was actually sequestered? Was that potentially a reason we began to lose habitability?"

Dr Tutolo is buzzing about the latest space breakthroughs, which tie in with his ongoing work on Earth - trying to turn anthropogenic CO2 into carbonates as a climate change solution.

He added: "Learning about the mechanisms of making these minerals on Mars helps us to better understand how we can do it here. Studying the collapse of Mars' warm and wet early days also tells us that habitability is a very fragile thing."

The doctor said it's clear that small changes in atmospheric CO2 can lead to "huge changes" in the planet's ability to harbour life. "The most remarkable thing about Earth is that it's habitable and it has been for at least four billion years," he concluded.

"Something happened to Mars that didn't happen to Earth."

NASA’s Curiosity Rover landed on Mars in August, 2012, and has since travelled more than 20 miles (34 kms) across the planet's surface.

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