NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has made a big claim regarding the discovery of ancient life on Mars.
In a recent interview with Benny Johnson, Isaacman pointed to the sheer scale of the universe, which includes two trillion galaxies and countless habitable but undiscovered exoplanets, as a solid reason to hope for extra-terrestrial life.
When Johnson was asked what his opinion was on the existence of life beyond Earth, the NASA chief said, “There are two trillion galaxies out there and how many stars are there? And how many of them have exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone? Surely there must be life out there somewhere.”
“I would say there’s a possibility that there could be life out there – everywhere,” he said.
Talking specifically about Mars and the possibility of ancient life on the Red Planet, he asserted, “If we can get to Mars and we can bring back samples I’d put it as a 90 percent better chance that we can prove that there was some microbial life on Mars.”
Isaacman also talked about a mission called Europa Clipper, which was designed to detect traces of ancient life and biosignatures on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
In July 2028, NASA is scheduled to launch a highly ambitious mission called Dragonfly to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.
While NASA has explored Titan with the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens lander in 2005, this mission is unique because it involves a robotic rotorcraft, which is basically a large, nuclear-powered drone like an octocopter.
“What if you find biosignatures there, it will change the whole equation, leading to consequential discoveries in human history,” Isaacman said.
Last month, the Perseverance rover found the underground remains of a 4-billion-year-old water delta, providing some of the most compelling evidence of Mars’ watery past.
