NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying signs of ancient life on Mars and has now collected some of the most promising samples from the Red Planet to date.
According to NASA, several rock samples containing organic matter have been found in Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide crater hosting what scientists believe was once a river delta that formed about 3.5 years ago. billions of years.
“Jezero was selected for this mission because… it allows us to explore an ancient habitable environment (and) it allows us to search for evidence of possible Martin life in rocks deposited at that time, approximately 3 billion and a half years ago,” Perseverance Project scientist Ken Farley said in a recorded panel on rover discoveries.
“I want to emphasize that this mission is not looking for existing life, things that are alive today. Instead, we are looking into the very distant past, when the climate of Mars was very different from what it was. is today,” Farley added.
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Perseverance launched in July 2020 and landed in February 2021 in Jezero Crater. Since July 7 this year, according to NASA, the rover has collected four samples from the delta, bringing the total number of “scientifically compelling rock samples” collected to 12.
Martian rocks with organic matter
Perseverance is currently studying the sedimentary rocks of the delta. The rover previously explored the floor of Jezero Crater, finding igneous rocks. The contrast of the two “provides us with a rich understanding of post-crater geologic history and a suite of diverse samples,” Farley said in a press release.
For example, the project scientist reported a collected mudstone that contains “intriguing organic compounds”.
With the help of an instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC, organic molecules have been found in “Wildcat Ridge”, a 3-foot-wide rock believed to have formed with mud and fine sand in an evaporation. salt water lake billions of years ago.
“Clearly we are uncovering a bigger story than what is happening in Jezero Crater. We have found signals that we believe may be coming from organic matter on every target we observed with SHERLOC at this day,” said SHERLOC scientist Sunanda Sharma. in the panel.
Sharma added that this was not “unexpected”, as it matches previous research. “However, it does say that organics seem to persist in the very harsh Martian surface environment, which is very exciting for us.”
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According to NASA, the Curiosity Mars rover previously found evidence of organic matter in rock dust samples in 2013. Perseverance has also detected organic matter in Jezero Crater before, but the latest discovery was made in an area with conditions that would have allowed life to exist in the distant past, say scientists.
“The fact that organic matter was found in such sedimentary rock — known to preserve fossils of ancient life here on Earth — is significant,” Farley said.
“However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding the contents of the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it is returned to Earth for further study as part of the sample return from Mars (from NASA and the European Space Agency) campaign.”
