NASA’s Rover Perseverance discovered rocks on a dry river bed that may contain potential signs of ancient microscopic life on Mars, scientists said on Wednesday, 10.
They emphasized that an in -depth analysis of the perseverance sample – ideally in laboratories on Earth – before reaching any conclusion is required.
Although it acknowledges that the latest analysis “is certainly not the definitive answer,” NASA’s head of the scientific mission, Nicky Fox, said it is “the closest we come from discovering ancient life on Mars.”
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Exploring Mars since 2021, Rover cannot directly detect life, past or present. Instead, it carries a drill to penetrate the rocks and tubes to store the samples collected at the most appropriate places to house life billions of years ago. Samples await recovery on Earth – an ambitious plan that is waiting while NASA seeks cheaper and faster options.
Calling her “exciting discovery,” two scientists who did not participate in the study-Janice Bishop, from the Seti Institute, and Mario Parente, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst-were quick to point out what non-biological processes could be responsible.
“This is part of the reason why we can’t go so far to say, ‘Aha, this is a positive life proof,” Chief researcher Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University told the Associated Press agency. “All we can say is that one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there can be other ways to create this set of characteristics we see.”
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Anyway, Hurowitz said he is the best and most convincing candidate so far in searching for Rover for potential signs of ancient life. It was the 25th sample collected; The total is now 30. The findings were published in the journal Nature.
“It would be amazing to be able to conclude that these characteristics were formed by something that was alive on another planet billion years ago, right?” Said Hurowitz. But even if this is not the case, it is “a valuable lesson on all the ways in which nature can conspire to deceive us.”
Collected last summer, the sample is of reddish -rich clay rocks in Neretva Vallis, a river channel that once brought water to the Jezero crater. This outcrop of sedimentary rock, known as Bright Angel Formation, was researched by the scientific instruments of perseverance before drilling.
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Along with organic carbon, a fundamental element of life, Hurowitz and his team found tiny particles, nicknamed poppy seeds and leopard spots, which were enriched with iron phosphate and iron sulfide. On Earth, these chemical compounds are by-products of the decomposition of organic matter by microorganisms.
“There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any were present in the old Mars, they could also have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in a lake like the Jezero crater,” wrote Bishop and Parente in an editorial accompanying the article.
There is no evidence of current life on Mars, but NASA over decades has sent spaceships to Mars in search of past aquatic environments that could have sustained life in the past.
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When Perseverance was released in 2020, NASA expected samples to return to Earth in the early 2030s. But this date was postponed to the 2040s, as costs increased to $ 11 billion, paralyzing recovery efforts.
Until samples are transported from Mars by robotic spacecraft or astronauts, scientists will have to rely on land substitutes and laboratory experiments to evaluate the viability of ancient Martian life, according to Hurowitz.
NASA’s interim administrator Sean Duffy said budgets and time will determine the best way to proceed, and even raised the possibility of sending sophisticated equipment to Mars to analyze samples on the red planet. “All options are open,” he said.
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Ten of the Titanium sample tubes collected by the perseverance were placed on the Martian surface a few years ago as a backup for the rest aboard the Rover, all part of NASA’s still indefinite return mission.
