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NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found signs of ancient life in rock on Mars; the scientists of the mission team are extremely cautious, but they remain cautious as further analysis is needed to confirm the discovery.
The rover came across an interesting, arrowhead-shaped rock that bears chemical and structural signatures that may have been formed by microbial life billions of years ago, when Mars was much wetter than it is today. Inside the rock, which scientists have nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” Persistence’s instruments found organic compounds, which are precursors to the chemistry of life as we know it. Running through the length of the rock are veins of calcium sulphate, which are mineral deposits that suggest water – also essential to life – once ran through the rock.
The rover found dozens of millimeter-sized splotches, each surrounded by a black ring and mimicking the appearance of leopard spots. These rings contain iron and phosphate, which also appear on Earth as a result of chemical reactions led by microbes.
“These spots are a big surprise,” said David Flannery, an astronomer and member of the Persistence science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. statement. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossil record of microbes living in the subsurface.”
Related: ‘Oasis in the desert’: NASA’s Curiosity rover finds pure sulfur in Martian rocks
“We’ve never seen these three things together on Mars before,” said Morgan Cable, a scientist on the Endurance team, in a video posted on NASA’s YouTube today (July 25).
Cheyava Falls is located on the edge of an ancient, 400-meter-wide (437-yard) river valley called Neretva Vallis. Scientists suspect that this ancient channel was carved long ago by water flowing into the Jezero Crater; Neretva Vallis runs along the inner wall of this region. In one possible case, mud already containing organic compounds was dumped into the valley and later cemented into the rock of Cheyava Falls, which Perseverance sampled on July 21. The second episode of water oozing into the rock formed the calcium sulfate veins of the object. and black spots that the team sees today.
To be clear, the visible features of the rock are not irrefutable evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars—at least not yet. It is possible, for example, that the calcium sulfate observed entered the rock at uninhabitable high temperatures, perhaps during a nearby volcanic event. However, it is an open question whether the observed black ring spots could be the result of such non-biological chemical reactions, the scientists say.
“This trip through the Neretva Vallis river bed paid off as we found something we’ve never seen before, which will give our scientists so much to study,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in the statement .
“We’ve zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from almost every angle imaginable,” Ken Farley, a Persistence project scientist at Caltech in California, said in the statement. “Scientifically, persistence has nothing more to offer.”
Related Stories:
— Little Mars snowman seen by NASA’s Perseverance rover (photo)
— It is possible that the best evidence of possible ancient life is in the rock sample of the persistence rover
– Perseverance Mars rover digs into fascinating rock formation ‘Bright Angel’ (photo)
To fully understand what happened in the ancient river valley billions of years ago, scientists are eager to get the Cheyava Falls sample to Earth, where it can be examined with powerful instruments that Perseverance’s limited suite does not have.
However, the complex Mars Sample Return effort has run into a number of snags in recent months after its costs ballooned to $11 billion. In its current form, the program requires multiple launches to Mars to land a vehicle on the Red Planet, after which Perseverance will travel to the vehicle and drop the collected samples, or pop those samples over to a recovery helicopter that can with your hand. Then, an ascender would launch the samples into orbit, where they would be picked up by a spacecraft and returned to Earth.
NASA evaluated simpler alternatives from industry and academic groups and $1.5 million in contracts were awarded for seven companies looking into the effort; three of the agency’s own research centers are also conducting studies.
