By Valentina Bastias Atias

Santiago, Oct 10 (EFE).– Argentina’s Geronimo Villanueva, one of the scientists behind a recently released study confirming the existence of water on Mars, is enthusiastic about the possibility of discovering life on the red planet.

“In recent years, the study of (Mars) has been revived thanks to the discovery of liquid water in large quantities and methane gas, which makes possible the existence of life on that planet,” Villanueva, an engineer with NASA’s Goddard Center for Astrobiology, told EFE.

Villanueva, who holds Argentine, Italian and U.S. citizenship, said people once thought that Martian civilizations existed, a belief that fed the imaginations of scientists, writers and filmmakers worldwide.

But after missions began to be conducted in the 1960s “it was determined that Mars was an arid planet, analogous to Chile’s Atacama Desert, with extreme radiation and very low temperatures in which it’s impossible to survive.”

“My regular work consists of studying the solar system, mainly Mars’ atmosphere,” said Villanueva, who works at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and specializes in the search for organic molecules on Mars and in bodies of ice.

That research has led to his participation in the team behind NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity, a sophisticated rover that a few days ago confirmed, according to NASA, that the fourth planet in the Solar System was once able to store water in lakes over an extended period of time.

“We’re discovering that Mars had a very habitable past and can be now as well, because when we look for life we do so under the terrestrial surface, where certain conditions for biology are met,” said the electronics and telecommunications expert, who joined NASA 11 years ago after pursuing his career in Europe.

What makes a planet habitable, according to the engineer, is the presence of a solid crust, an atmosphere and liquid water on its surface, conditions that until now were only known to exist on Earth.

But he said recent discoveries show that “a great amount of subterranean water and organic gases” are found under Mars’ surface, which could enable human colonization in the distant future. EFE