In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
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Shall we note the elephant in the room? The Viking landers were stationary; if they killed anything it would only have been in the immediate area.
The article is slightly less dramatic than the headline (as is the way, I suppose). The author is not suggesting that the Viking landers could have done anything other than that, and he’s advocating for another mission that would test his hypothesis that any remaining life near the surface might survive by sucking miniscule amounts of moisture out of the air.
I’m all for more Mars missions, it just seems a needless smear of Viking in order to achieve that.
