Did NASA's Viking landers accidentally kill life on Mars? Why one scientist thinks so

NASA 's Viking 1 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars in 1975 , carrying a mission to unlock the secrets of the Red Planet .

At the time, Viking life detection experiments were modeled after culturing techniques commonly used to identify microbes on Earth .

Dirk Schulze-Makuch , an astrobiologist at the Technische Universität Berlin in Germany , says the water-based nature of its life-detection experiments might have unintentionally killed it.

Life is very good at taking advantage of these physical or chemical effects.

Mars and Earth are so much alike, and you have a lot of the same kind of minerals.

The main salt on Mars appears to be sodium chloride, which means this idea could work.

The assumption that life requires water hinders our understanding of extraterrestrial life.

Victoria Corless , a PhD in organic synthesis at the University of Toronto , says there are numerous ways to search for life on Mars .

She says the best way to find life is to look for hygroscopic salts, sodium chloride and perchlorates.

Corless: "I do not know whether there are really microbes on Mars , but I feel confident that my proposed solution could work and might reveal life".