Testing Martian Methane on Earth

Rural eastern Washington will become a testing ground in support of a mission to explore the martian atmosphere for potential evidence of life under a recently funded NASA project developed by scientists from Cornell University, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and Washington State University.

The proposed mission is intended to help determine whether periodic plumes of methane gas previously detected within the martian atmosphere are the product of biological or other activity, such as volcanism.