Is there existence on Mars?
It shines brilliantly, it appears red, it holds mystery – and this month, it is closest to our planet! After being away for two years in the far reaches of its orbit, Mars is back in the limelight this January.
You can observe the “red planet” positioned high in the southern sky on these chilly winter nights. It is one of the two bright celestial bodies, slightly less bright and undeniably redder than Jupiter. Mars achieves its peak brightness on 12 January when it approaches Earth at a “mere” distance of 96 million kilometres.
Utilizing a moderately strong telescope, you might discern that Mars is a desolate and smaller counterpart to Earth, entirely cloaked in reddish deserts and exhibiting frozen white polar caps. Positioned further from the Sun, Mars is a cooler world, with its polar caps primarily consisting of frozen carbon dioxide. With an atmosphere that is less than one-hundredth as dense as ours, and lacking a protective magnetic shield, Mars’s surface is vulnerable to harmful radiation from outer space.
It is an environment where most Earthly life – including human beings – would swiftly succumb. Nevertheless, researchers have long speculated that Mars might be the nearest haven of extraterrestrial life – not little green aliens, but clusters of bacteria or other basic lifeforms.
Despite extensive decades of exploration, the existence of life on Mars remains one of the profound enigmas of the universe. The first spacecraft to alight on the red deserts, the Viking landers of 1976, examined the soil for indications of life – yet the findings were inconclusive. In one instance, the soil sample released gases when water and nutrients were introduced – similar to yeast in a fermenting vat on Earth – whereas other tests yielded negative results.
None of the numerous later missions have directly searched for life on the red planet. However, NASA’s newest rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, have discovered a multitude of organic compounds – the fundamental elements of life – in the Martian deserts. Considering that Mars had a warmer and wetter climate in its past, it is quite plausible that living cells developed there just as they did on Earth.
Perseverance has been extracting samples of rocks containing organic compounds – and potentially live or fossilized cells – and storing them on the surface of Mars for a future mission aimed at bringing them back to Earth, where scientists can unlock their deepest mysteries in the lab. Yet, there is one complication. Until now, no one has financed a mission to travel to Mars and retrieve these valuable samples.
Meanwhile, European scientists are on the verge of dispatching a dedicated life-detection mission to Mars. Rosalind Franklin is named in honor of the British scientist whose experiments directly contributed to deciphering the structure of the life-molecule DNA. Set to launch in 2028, the mission will investigate the Martian soil for signs of past or – ideally – present living cells.
These robotic missions could, however, face competition. Space entrepreneur Elon Musk has designed his colossal Starship rocket with the objective of sending humans to Mars within the next few years. Until recently, space analysts have viewed this ambition as overly optimistic.
But later this month, Musk will secure a significant supporter in the White House. In a 2024 election campaign speech in Wilmington, North Carolina, Donald Trump urged: “Elon, get those rocketships going, because we want to reach Mars before my term ends!” Trump’s Wilmington address may become the equivalent of President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech at Rice University, Texas, where he proclaimed, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and accomplish the other tasks not because they are easy, but because they are difficult.”
Launch windows to the red planet occur every two years: the next chance is in 2026, when Musk intends to send five uncrewed Starships to Mars to set the stage for a human mission expected to launch at the close of 2028. The quest for Martian life would receive a boost if a robotic Starship mission were to gather and return the Perseverance samples as a preliminary run for sending humans back to Earth. Or – perhaps – an astronaut in 2029 may stumble upon Martian life within an intriguing rock that captures their attention as they traverse the planet’s red deserts.
What’s Happening
We have an eventful commencement to 2025, with the Moon, planets, and meteors highlighting the New Year festivities – along with the three brightest planets making guest appearances.
Initially, the crescent Moon will approach the dazzling Venus in the evening sky on 3 January. The splendid Evening Star ranks second in brightness only to the Moon, and a small telescope reveals it as a half-illuminated sphere.
Stay awake later that night (3 to 4 January) for a cosmic firework display, as meteors streak outwards from a point in the sky close to the “tail” of the Great Bear (Ursa Major). Here, astronomers once illustrated the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (the mural quadrant); although both this obsolete astronomical instrument and its namesake star pattern have long been retired, the name endures in the annual Quadrantid meteor shower, recognized for its vibrant multi-colored shooting stars.
Additional excitement awaits on the evening of 4 January, as the Moon passes in front of Saturn in an unusual planetary occultation. Saturn fades from sight behind the Moon at approximately 5:15 PM (the precise timing depends on your location), and reappears around 6:25 PM.
A few days later, during the early morning hours of 10 January the Moon will transit in front of the Pleiades star cluster, obscuring four of the cluster’s brightest stars, the Seven Sisters. That evening, the Moon will come close to Jupiter, the second brightest planet.
Almost equaling Jupiter’s brightness, Mars (refer to the main article) will be at its closest point to Earth in two years on 12 January, with the Full Moon passing nearby on the night of 13 to 14 January: observers in North America and western Africa will witness the Moon directly passing in front of Mars. The Red Planet will be perfectly aligned with the Sun and Earth on 16 January.
And let’s not overlook the brilliant winter stars and constellations visible this month, including the magnificent Orion and Sirius, the most radiant star in the cosmos.
3 January: Moon close to Venus; peak of the Quadrantid meteor shower
4 January: Earth at perihelion; Moon occludes Saturn
6 January, 11:56 PM: First Quarter Moon
10 January, 1:30 AM to 4:00 AM: Moon occludes the Pleiades
10 January, evening: Venus at greatest elongation east; Moon near Jupiter
12 January: Mars nearest to Earth
13 January, 10:27 PM: Full Moon near Mars
16 January: Mars at opposition near Regulus
18 January: Venus adjacent to Saturn
21 January, 8:31 PM: Last Quarter Moon
29 January, 12:36 PM: New Moon
Nigel Henbest’s ‘Stargazing 2025’ (Philip’s £6.99) is your monthly resource for everything taking place in the night sky next year