NASA Curiosity’s robotic vehicle has found the largest organic compounds ever seen on Mars, rekindling the debate about some way of life having emerged on the red planet for billions of years ago. The compounds were detected in 3.7 billion rock samples in Yellowknife Bay, the former bed of a lake, which would have housed all the necessary ingredients for the emergence of life.
Tests performed in the rover Alkane chains detected – remaining organic molecules of fatty acids. Compounds can be produced by chemical reactions, but are crucial components of cell membranes of all living organisms on Earth.
The researchers did not dug the discovery of a “biological signature” – an irrefutable proof that there was already some kind of life on the planet. According to experts, however, it is the most promising discovery for the identification of remnants of life in Mars.
“These molecules can be produced by chemistry or biology,” Caronline Feissineinet explained, a chemistry that coordinated material research in the atmosphere and space in Guyancourt’s observation laboratory near Paris. “If we have long fatty acid chains on Mars, they can come from – and this is just a hypothesis – from the degradation of cell membranes 3.7 billion years ago.”
Rover Curiosity has traveled more than 30 kilometers in the Gale crater since arrived in Mars in 2012. The robot detected in 2018 traces of organic compounds in petrified clay, but were relatively short carbon molecules.
For this last work, Freissinet and his colleagues developed a new way of testing samples taken from the rocks. This time, they managed to detect much longer organic chains.
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“Although abiotic processes can form fatty acid chains, they are considered universal products of terrestrial biochemistry and, perhaps, Martian,” scientists wrote in an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Siences (PNAS).
