“I think there’s already life on Mars, and we’ve probably brought it,” he said during a teleconference with Central America organized by the Center for Cosmonautics and Aviation in Moscow.

He detailed that whatever the processing and cleaning of terrestrial objects that humans send to the red planet, it is impossible to purify them completely.

“Those rovers, those stations came to Mars—no matter how we process them, how we clean them, or how they pass quarantine—still brought with them the simplest microorganisms,” he said.

“Although the conditions on Mars are not terrestrial, these microorganisms have survived and are beginning to evolve,” added the cosmonaut.

He recalled that the Russian segment of the International Space Station carried out the Test experiment, which demonstrated the ability of microorganisms to survive in outer space.

“Therefore, when man travels to Mars, he will probably find life very similar to that on Earth, but already more adapted to the conditions on Mars,” Artemiev guessed.

Oleg Artemiev made two space flights aboard the ISS in 2014 and 2018 with a total duration of 366 days and made three sorties into outer space with a total duration of more than 20 hours.