Explore Mars
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaks during the Humans to Mars Summit (H2M) on May 6, 2013, at the Lisner Auditorium of the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Explore Mars Inc. held the summit to discuss Mars exploration and the goal of sending humans to Mars by 2013. Getty Images

A private American space firm, Explore Mars, has reportedly discovered a new way to detect life on Mars, using military technology, reported Times of India.

Explore Mars is a non-profit firm that was created with the goal to send humans to Mars within the next two decades. Their latest project, ExoLance, hopes to detect life on Mars, and envisions using lightweight penetrator probes or arrows to detect microorganisms living under or on the Martian surface.

As each small, lightweight penetrator probe (arrow) impacts the surface, it leaves behind a radio transmitter at the surface to communicate with an orbiter, and then kinetically burrows to emplace a life-detection experiment one to two meters below the surface.
- Explore Mars

"As each small, lightweight penetrator probe (arrow) impacts the surface, it leaves behind a radio transmitter at the surface to communicate with an orbiter, and then kinetically burrows to emplace a life-detection experiment one to two meters below the surface," read a statement on the Explore Mars website.

The entire life-detector system works around a metabolic test that differentiates non-living chemistry from the chemistry created by the metabolism of living organisms.

Explore Mars will reportedly combine the experiments of the 1970s Viking landers and the Curiosity rover with weapons technology.

Interestingly, whenever life will be successfully detected using the ExoLance experiment, the system will also be able to determine if similar life already exists on Earth or if it's an entirely new species.