In 2001 a new NASA probe was launched. Called Odyssey, it was sent to Mars to carry out the most detailed analysis ever of the planet’s surface. What it has discovered may be about to answer one of the great questions and solve one of astronomy’s biggest mysteries.

Are we alone in the universe? Or is there life on Mars?

Ever since people first looked up into the night sky, there’s been a question that has bothered us all. From the smallest children to the world’s greatest astronomers, all have wondered "Are we alone in the universe?”.

The question of life beyond comes to me strongest at night, looking up at the stars and looking at all those little points of light and wondering "This is a galaxy full of life, or is this it?"

It’s the question that societies often have been asking over the ages. We really just wanna know how did we get here? Why do we exist? Are we the only people in the universe? Are we the only signs of life?

This search for life elsewhere in the universe is perhaps the greatest scientific quest of all. But so far most efforts have concentrated on just one planet.

Searching for life is, is a difficult job. You know, what we'd like to be able to do is travel to all these distant worlds and scoop up samples. Unfortunately the worlds that we can/ travel to, or the other planets in our solar system and none of them are very good in terms of prospecting for biology. The best one is probably Mars.

Mars, one of our nearest neighbors, just 60 million kilometers away.

The reason Mars is important because it’s close by. It's our nearest neighbor to earth. And we’d like to see if life is there because if we can find life in 2 places in our solar system we know that life isn’t unique here just on Earth. It’s much more likely that life fully exists elsewhere, perhaps elsewhere in our solar system, perhaps in other solar systems, other parts of the universe.