Planetary Fourier Spectrometer

The Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) is an infrared spectrometer built by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (Italian National Institute for Astrophysics) along with the Istituto di Fisica dello spazio Interplanetario and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italian National Research Council).

In March 2004, Professor Vittorio Formisano, the researcher in charge of the Mars Express Planetary Fourier Spectrometer, announced the discovery of methane in the Martian atmosphere.

Thus, this discovery suggests that the methane is being continually replenished by some unidentified volcanic or geologic process, or that some kind of extremophile life form similar to some existing on Earth is metabolising carbon dioxide and hydrogen and producing methane.

[2] In July 2004, rumours began to circulate that Formisano would announce the discovery of ammonia at an upcoming conference.

It later came to light that none had been found; in fact some noted that the PFS was not precise enough to distinguish ammonia from carbon dioxide anyway.