NASA’s Perseverance rover may have possibly found evidence of life beyond on Mars, after spotting a rock speckled with chemical symptoms that may also have harbored ancient microbes.
The rover discovered the arrow-shaped rock, nicknamed Chevaya Falls, along the north bank of the Neretva Vallis, a now-dry ancient river that once flowed into Mars’ Jezero Crater.
The rover analyzed the rock, revealing veiny sediments filled with biological compounds, evidence of water movement and leopard-like spots of chemical reactions, which may have been used by ancient microbes to produce energy.
“These spots are a big surprise,” David Flannery, a member of the Perseverance science team and an astrobiologist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said in a statement. “On Earth, those kinds of features in rocks are related to fossil archives of microbes that live underground. “
Perseverance is a key component of NASA’s $2. 7 billion Mars 2020 mission. Since arriving on Mars, the rover has been searching for signs of ancient life on the Martian surface as it travels through the 50-kilometer-wide Jezero crater, collecting dozens of rock samples. for an imaginable return to Earth.
The rover discovered the speckled rock in a region of the Red Planet that was once warmer and wetter, meaning any signs of ancient life would appear fossilized within the rocks. The analyses, carried out through SHERLOC (Scanning of Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organic Matter and Chemicals), showed that the rock contained carbon-based molecules, as well as bands of reddish hematite with stains of iron and phosphate.
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It’s not yet clear whether the discovered carbon once belonged to ancient life and whether the blobs are lines of it, or whether they were produced by non-biological processes, the researchers said.
“Cheyava Falls is the most confusing, complex, and potentially potentially studied rock ever studied through Perseverance,” Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, said in the statement.
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“On the one hand, we have our first convincing detection of biological matter, unique color blobs that indicate chemical reactions that microbial life can also use as an energy source, and transparent evidence that water, necessary for life, once passed through the rock. “he said. ” On the other hand, we have not been able to determine precisely how the rock formed and to what extent neighboring rocks would have possibly heated the Cheyava Falls and contributed to those characteristics. “
Whatever the answer, it probably won’t come anytime soon. To bring Perseverence’s valuable shipment back to Earth for analysis, the European Space Agency (ESA) first proposed its Sample Retrieval Lander, a spacecraft carrying a small rocket that will carry the rover. with their rock and soil samples. The rocket will then be put back into orbit with the samples.
But the project is now well over budget and behind schedule, from its initial upload and $5 billion launch window in 2026 to more than $11 billion through 2040. In an effort to take advantage of Perseverence’s haul earlier, NASA opened bids to private companies.
Ben Turner is an editor at Live Science based in the United Kingdom. It covers physics and astronomy, among other topics such as generation and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before studying as a journalist. When he’s not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing guitar, and playing chess.
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