Meet Orpheus—a Hopper Mission Built to Hunt for Life in Martian Volcanoes
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-orpheus-hopper-mission-built-life.html
We've spent decades scratching the surface of Mars trying to uncover life there. But we've been searching a barren wasteland bombarded by radiation and bathed in toxic perchlorates. The entire time, it's likely that it's been too hostile to harbor extant life. So if we want a better shot at finding currently living life on Mars, we need to go underground. That is exactly the purpose of Orpheus, a proposed Mars vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) hopper mission put forth in a paper [PDF] presented by Connor Bunn and Pascal Lee of the SETI Institute at the 57th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).
In what might be the best naming reference for a space mission ever, Orpheus is named after the Greek hero who tamed the three-headed hound Cerberus to gain access to the Underworld. The actual mission aims to explore the deep volcanic fissures, pits, and cave vents of a region of Mars known as Cerberus Fossae. While there, it plans to unlock some of Mars's origin story, as well as search for biosignatures that indicate the presence of extant life.
Finding something on another planet that is still alive is the single highest priority of the field of astrobiology. It's the only way we can perform the protein and genetic analyses needed to prove that the life we found didn't just hitch a ride from Earth on a meteorite billions of years ago. But so far, we've come up with nothing.
Cerberus Fossae, however, is a good place to look for it. It's part of Elysium Planitia, and boasts some of the youngest known volcanoes and lava flows on the entire Red Planet. Young volcanoes are thought of as potential astrobiological gold mines-they hold better-preserved erupted materials, and, crucially, fresher biosignatures. Not to mention that life on Earth itself might very well have started next to volcanic fissures in the deep ocean.
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