cassini found the water to contain salt, silica and organic molecules all pointing to a habitable environment. that sample may have contained signs of microbial life the casino instrument were not designed to detect them. we need to go back to enchiladas and europa with better instruments. how will we know life when we see it? for years of peer-reviewed theoretical research, lab and field work, the astrobiology community has developed something called the latter of life which lays out what to measure and how to measure it. the latter begins with a habitable environment, with metabolism and ultimately darwinian evolution. thanks to decades of nasa spacecraft missions we know how to take the next step in the search for life at europa, angelus and of course mars and eventually titan. 3.8 billion years ago around the same time life he rose on earth a significant portion of mars was covered in water. mars remained wet for 500 million years before it lost its magnetic field, and conditions became similar to what we see today, a cold, dusty, dry surface bombarded by solar and cosmic radiation. of li