An experiment prompted by a 2008 surprise finding from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggests that soil samples examined by NASA's Viking Mars Landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life that were destroyed inadvertently during the testing process. If that is the case, then for over 30 years we have been operating under a set of false assumptions. The Curiosity rover that NASA plans to deliver to Mars in 2012, with its ability to chemically analyze a wider variety of rocks and samples, may help solve this mystery once and for all.