He is famed in Hong Kong for helping design its contribution to space discovery - tools for the Mir space station and European Mars missions. Ng Tze-chuen recalls in our new weekly series the highs and lows of 30 years working with celebrated scientists, battling bureaucracy ... and being tailed by spies
If I had to wager with a deity on my life, I would bet, without hesitation, that there was once life on Mars. The question is: does microbial life still exist? That there was once Martian life is not a fringe opinion, but probably that of many, if not most exobiologists who have studied the Red Planet.
Now it is a matter of how to search for it. We know now that Mars once had a thick atmosphere, oceans and rivers, and a warm climate much like Earth. Mars and Earth were once the only two planets with the preconditions for life to evolve in our solar system.
Perhaps thanks to the popularity of science fiction writer H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds in 1897, some people had imagined technologically advanced Martians invading Earth. In reality, any 'Martians' we can expect to find would be microbes or their chemical signatures, at the lower end of the evolutionary tree.
In 1965, high resolution pictures taken by Nasa's Mariner 4 probe showed a dry Mars without rivers, oceans or any signs of water deposits. Scientists also argued that strong ultraviolet radiation due to extreme thin atmosphere would have killed all organic molecules on the surface.
However, more recent studies have found that so-called 'extremophiles', usually organisms, actually thrive in extreme condition. These creatures live in underwater volcanoes at boiling-point temperature.