NASA's Curiosity rover has failed to detect methane in the atmosphere of Mars, meaning life on the red planet may not currently exists.
The rover scanned Mars' air for methane by using a tiny laser but failed to find anything, according to the Associated Press.
"Based on previous measurements, we were expecting to go there and find 10 parts per billion or more, and we were excited about finding it. So when you go to search for something and you don't find it, there's a sense of disappointment," said Chris Webster, the principal investigator on Curiosity's Tuneable Laser spectrometer (TLS) in a press statement.
NASA had extremely high hopes that the rover would find methane after Curiosity landed in the summer of 2012. Earth-based telescopes found "plumes of the gas" several years ago, but the rover hasn't found anything so far.
"If you had microbial life somewhere on Mars that was really healthy and cranking away, you might see some of the signatures of that in the atmosphere," said mission scientist Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, according to the Associated Press.
The six-wheeled rover doesn't have to the equipment to look for simple life, currently living or from the past, according to NASA.
The first eight months Curiosity was on the red planet it analyzed the air during the day and night as the seasons changed. Nothing was ever detected.
"Every time we looked, we never saw it," said Webster, according to the Associated Press.
Webster said the news is discouraging but hunt for methane will continue on Mars.
On Earth, methane is a byproduct of life, and approximately 95 percent of atmospheric methane is produced by microbial organisms.
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