The Curiosity rover's failure to find methane on Mars is a disappointment to theories that there is still some kind of life on the red planet.
"Based on previous measurements, we were expecting to go there and find 10 parts per billion (ppbv) or more, and we were excited about finding it," Dr. Chris Webster, principal investigator on Curiosity's Tuneable Laser spectrometer (TLS) told BBC News. "So when you go to search for something and you don't find it, there's a sense of disappointment.
"This observation doesn't rule out the possibility of current microbial activity, [but] it lowers the probability certainly that methanogens are the source of that activity," he said.
While telescopes and satellites have apparently seen small but large amounts of the gas, the rover has not been able to pickup any signs of it. Despite the latest results, researchers have kept hope alive that the gas' smell might indicate there's life on Mars. Ninety-five percent of methane in the atmosphere is made by microbial organisms BBC News reported.
One team-member working on the case, Sushil Atreya from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said the recent results from the rover still leaves the possibiity that their life on the planet.
"There could still be other types of microbes on Mars," Atreya told BBC News. "This just makes it harder for there to be microbes that kick out methane."
The rover has had a very long journey on the red planet after landing last August when it began taking in its air and further investigating its certain aspects.
Dr. Geronimo Villanueva who examines the red planet's atmosphere using telescopes from the Earth told BBC News more accurate measurements needed to be collected from the rover before more sound conclusions could be made.
"This is an evolving story as we get more numbers," he told BBC News.
Villanueva is affiliated with the Catholic University of America, and based out of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
