NASA Research Suggests Mars Ice Contains Best Chance for Finding Ancient Life. John Batchelor and Bob Zimmerman discuss NASA's search for signs of past organic life on Mars. A research team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center conducted a simulated test to see how long microbiological remnants could survive Martian radiation conditions. The test exposed E. coli samples in simulated Martian sediment and pure water ice to radiation equivalent to a 50-million-year span. Results showed the samples rapidly decayed in the sediment. However, the E. coli samples survived the entire time span when encased in the ice. This research strongly suggests that searching for ancient microbiology should not occur in the dry tropics where current rovers operate. Instead, NASA must search above 30 degrees latitude where substantial near-surface ice exists. Finding living life is highly unlikely, but discovering fossilized corpses of past life in the ice is the most probable outcome.