BY FIONA HINDS ’21

In the summer of 2013, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter detected methane emissions in the Gale crater, a large depression near the Martian equator, according to the New York Times. Their findings were later replicated by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which measured levels of methane in the air that lasted for about two months. Methane on Earth is usually produced by living things, so this finding is both exciting and bewildering for scientists, who believe it could potentially indicate alien life.