NASA however, until relatively recently, have been having none of it. And the 1996 Mars Pathfinder mission produced spectacular images of around the landing site, investigated the structure of the martian atmosphere, weather and geology, and was a great test bed for new technologies for future missions, but noticeably did not carry experiments to search for signs of life on mars.

ALH84001 This high-resolution scanning electron microscope image shows an unusual tube-like structural form that is less than 1/100th the width of a human hair in size found in martian meteorite ALH84001 (Please note - I have coloured the 'worm' red so that it shows up more clearly)

The reason that we are here at all today marvelling at a new Mars explorer is because of the excitement in 1996 over the analysis of one of the very few Martian Meteorites that have both made it to Earth and been identified (a partial list of ones scientists have confirmed as being from Mars can be found here).

The one which kick started its own mini furore was a large potatoe sized martian meteorite catalogued as ALH84001; which had been sitting innocently in the Johnson Space Center meteorite collection since its discovery in the Antarctic in Christmas 1984. (ALH standing for the Allan Hills Site where it was discovered; 84 being the year it was found, and 001 indicating that it was the first sample processed in the lab).

Originally it was mislabelled as just an ordinary rock from space, and languished in NASA vaults until a routine check some 10 years later revealed its more exclusive and exotic martian origins. However, the real excitement came when photographs of the rock which had been magnified thousands of times seemed to show a microscopic worm that looked like bacteria that you would find on Earth.

The story that this could be the first proof of life on another planet was broken by NASA in August 1996, with The Daily Mirror (a national British newspaper) on the 7th August carrying the front page headline, 'Life on Mars - Official'; and the same story was repeated around the world. Even Bill Clinton, never one to miss a limelight opportunity, got in on the act and said, 'Today, rock 84001 speaks to us across all those billions of years and millions of miles. It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our Universe that science has ever uncovered'.