When the Viking 1 lander send down twin landers to study Mars in 1976, the results returned a negative result for the possibility of microbial life. However, for years, scientists have argued that the Viking's experimental techniques might’ve killed hygroscopic microbes living on Mars with too much water.

Oops? Life on Mars may have been found — before it was accidentally destroyed during a NASA mission nearly 50 years ago, one scientist has suggested. In 1975, just six years after Apollo 11 touched down on the moon,