“detected biological activity”
to be accurate, they did not detect “biological activity”
they detected what “could” represent evidence of “past” biological avtivity
and in fairness to me, I actually said “seemingly barren” landscape, leaving to future exploration to determine if what seems barren is actually barren, or not
No, to be accurate, there wasn’t anything to do with “past” biological activity, LR detected biological activity in the soil samples, or (as was claimed at the time, in order to avoid A) a PR firestorm from people who would refuse to accept the results and B) the end of human missions to other celestial bodies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_spacecraft_biological_experiments#Labeled_Release
http://mars.spherix.com/mars.html