In our astrobiology course, the instructor was explaining about Viking 1 & 2, the first probes to land on Mars. And he said how these probes basically took a scoop of the surface and analyzed it to determine if life was present. The instructor said that essentially, the scientists were looking for burps/farts. And when it seemed like they had some burps/farts, which may be indications of the presence of life, they then 'cooked' the soil (Pyrolytic Release) and analyzed it again to see if the burps/farts were reduced or no longer present. And because the two probes doing the same experiments came up with mixed results, it was probably the case that there was no life, or that if there was, it couldn't be conclusively proven. And the thought I came away with was that if there were indeed little microbes or tiny living organisms in the dirt, during the 'cooking' process, some or all would have been baked to death. In other words, the very first thing mankind might possibly have achieved on Mars was destroying life.
LINK: THE EXPERIMENTS OF VIKING 1 & 2
LINK: THE EXPERIMENTS OF VIKING 1 & 2
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