Searching for life on Mars

If all has gone according to plan, three spacecraft that launched in July 2020 will have reached Mars by the time you’re reading this. The missions, from the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates, were all scheduled to arrive at the red planet in February 2021. Two were to land.

The Arab world’s first mission to Mars, to arrive on Feb. 9, “aims to chart a global map of the planet’s climate” across about two years. “It would be humanity’s first such picture of Mars’ atmosphere” (Business Insider, Jan. 27).

Set to arrive the next day was Tianwen-1, China’s first interplanetary mission. It’s intended to be “the first Mars mission to send a spacecraft into orbit, drop a landing platform, and deploy a rover all in one expedition.” The landing is scheduled for May.

America’s spacecraft was to descend through the Martian atmosphere on Feb. 18, landing and deploying NASA’s newest rover, Perseverance. After 30 days the rover is to release the first interplanetary drone, a helicopter called Ingenuity.

Setting down in a crater with an ancient river bed, Perseverance has been tasked with drilling into the Martian soil for signs of alien life. “‘This is the first time in history when NASA has dedicated a mission to what we call astrobiology: the search for life—either maybe now, or ancient life—on another world,’ Jim Bridenstine, who served as the NASA Administrator during the Trump administration, said ahead of the rover’s launch.”

The Chinese rover “is equipped with a radar system that can detect underground pockets of water. It aims to sniff out ancient reservoirs that could harbor life.”

These technological achievements are astounding—yet ignore fundamental wisdom. Scientists are enthusiastic to find any signs of even microbial life beyond the earth to confirm their notion that life is the result of undirected natural processes without the need for intelligent design and creation. They are sorely misguided in this.

It does appear that liquid water once flowed across the Martian surface, but having some suitable conditions for biological life does not mean such life was ever there. There is no reason to believe life will be found on Mars.

On the other hand, what if evidence of microbial life were found? If proven to have not come from the earth, that would certainly be a remarkable discovery. Yet it would say nothing about how such life came to be. It would not prove life arising spontaneously from non-life or evolutionary development. All it would mean is that God created physical life beyond the earth. Of course, we still have no reason to think that He’s done so.

For more on the impossibility of life arising on its own, and the uniqueness of the earth as a habitation for life, request or download our free study guides Life’s Ultimate Question: Does God Exist? and Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe? at ucg.org/booklets.