ALYSON E. GROVE/Arizona Daily Wildcat

UA scientist William Boynton looks in on a model of the GRS spacecraft Friday afternoon in the Kuiper Space Sciences building. Boynton, who headed the GRS project, is working on a proposal to send a life finder to Mars that eventually might lead to conclusive evidence of a water source on the planet.

GRS team proposes organic compound detector for Mars mission

UA scientists, who recently celebrated the successful arrival of the GRS spacecraft on Mars, will now look to sending a so-called "life finder" to Mars by 2007.

The life finder, known to scientists as the Thermal Evolved Gas Analyzer organic compound detector, will search through Martian soil samples for volatile compounds such as water, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons - any of which could be indicators of life on Mars, said Heather Enos, project coordinator for the University of Arizona Gamma Ray Spectrometer team.

The purpose of the TEGA is not necessarily to find life, Enos said.

"There is nothing we could detect that would give us conclusive proof of the existence of life (on Mars)," she said.

The purpose of the mission, rather, is to gather more information that eventually might lead to conclusive evidence of a water source on Mars.

Enos said the existence of a water source on Mars should be proven or disproven within seven years. This source would probably be found in ice and/or ground water, she added.

"Once you have a confirmed water source, the likelihood of life is 99 percent," Enos said, adding that this does not imply human or intelligent life - just life.

"We're very close to being able to make a positive hypothesis one way or another."

The TEGA would be sent to Mars on NASA's Artemis probe, which is expected to be launched in 2007, Enos said.

William Boynton, a UA scientist who headed the GRS project, will submit a proposal this spring to attach the TEGA onto the Artemis probe.

"We'll almost certainly propose. Whether it gets accepted is probably a 50/50 chance," Boynton said.

The TEGA would operate from the Martian surface, digging a half-meter down to reach soil that contains a low concentration of oxidizing compounds that reduce the presence of organic compounds in an area.

Boynton said the presence of oxidizing compounds on the Martian surface may have destroyed whatever organic compounds were already there. Therefore, the probability of finding organic compounds is relatively low at about 5 percent.

He added that if the life finder does not find organic compounds, it is either because they were never there in the first place or because there simply are none left to be found.