 The Search for Life on Mars using the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer 'MOMA'.  L. Becker1, M. Antione2, T. Cornish2, V. Pinnick3, and R, Cotter3. 1Johns Hopkins Physics and Astronomy Department, 3701 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, MD 21210; lbecker@pha.jhu.edu; 2Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkin Rd., Laurel, MD, 20723; School of Medicine, 725 Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD, 21205.    Introduction: NASA and ESA are now entering into a new phase of planetary exploration with the current scheduled joint missions to Mars.  Our interest in Mars was initially motivated by the studies of martian meteorites that suggested that the early history of the Red Planet was remarkably similar to the Earth's, where life apparently arose some 4 billion years ago.  If this is indeed the case, then Mars was presumably a much warmer, wetter, planet than it is today.  This hypothesis is further supported by orbital imagery returned by the Viking, Mariner, Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Express (MEx) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the recent rover missions, MER and Phoenix, that all show compelling evidence that copious liquid water existed on the surface of Mars in the past.  In fact, new images provided by MRO suggest that there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the surface of the Red Planet. Other MRO and MGS data suggest that an ocean may have once existed at high northern latitudes, and valley networks apparently once carried water into the northern basin.  All of these data suggest that life could have arisen on Mars in liquid water environments.   Extinct Organic Matter: The search for extinct organic matter (i.e., organic matter generated by nowextinct organisms, in rocks, sediments, and ices from Mars and other planets and moons in our solar system) or 'extant' (living organisms) organic matter is critical to the determination of where life existed.  Missions to Mars have the potential to address whether life arose there in a separate origin and may further provide information about our own prebiotic evolution, a record that has all but been erased from Earth's crust.  Future joint missions between NASA and ESA may enable us to search for clues of life in a liquid water environment.  It seems clear that the potential for learning about life beyond our own planet is one of considerable interest to scientists and the general public alike.  Yet, as we learned from the Viking and Phoenix missions, the search for life signs is problematic and requires an appropriate strategy that will maximize our opportunities to properly examine these compelling questions. Another potential hurdle to the search for past or present life on Mars is the forward contamination of the planet with either terrestrial organisms or biomolecules.  This problem makes it essential that organic analyses be carried out as 'cleanly' as possible in order to provide a useful baseline data set for comparison with future landed missions and possibly sample return mission in the future.   Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer 'MOMA': My interest in the development of instrumentation for life detection has led to the currently funded (NASA) effort to develop a mass spectrometer, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA).  MOMA combines Gas Chromatography [1] (GC) and Laser Desorption [2] (LD) to form 'intact organic compounds' (gas and solid phase) that are mass analyzed using an Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer.  The formation of ions using to different approaches (pyrolysis and laser ionization) enables the detection of a broad range of organic compounds in the 100 to 2000 amu mass range.  This instrument has been selected to fly on a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, 'ExoMars,' in 2018.    [1] Evans-Nguyen, T., Becker, L., Doroshenko, V., and Cotter, R.J. (2009) Int. J. of Mass Spectrom. 278: 170-177.; [2] Becker, L. Popp, B. Rust, T. and Bada, J.L. (1999) Earth and Planetary Sci. Lett. 167, 71-79.    
