Life on the Red Planet?
Mars rover Perseverance finds possible clues
Created: 11/27/2022, 7:30 p.m
By: Stefanie Fischhaber
The Mars rover "Perseverance" finds possible evidence of life in rocks.
© dpa/JPL-Caltech
Mars rover Perseverance may have found evidence of life on Mars.
Rock samples from the red planet showed organic molecules.
Pasadena - Life on Mars immediately conjures up images of green Martians with antennae.
But whether there is life on the red planet and what it looks like remains unknown, even after years of research.
NASA scientists may now have found the first clues.
Mars mission "Perseverance": NASA scientists discover signs of life
The Mars rover Perseverance has been exploring Mars since landing in February 2021.
The rover's mission is to examine and collect rocks.
The robot is currently in an area that US space agency scientists are calling "Yori Pass," according to the NASA mission's website.
The area is near the base of the old river delta of the Jezero crater.
The rover may have found evidence of life there.
The Martian rocks unearthed in Yoir Pass show signs of a watery past and are teeming with organic molecules that form the basis of life as we know it.
The scientists hope that the rover has hit formerly fertile ground.
Organic Molecules in Rock Samples: Life Found on Mars?
The experts told the
Washington Post
that they hoped the rock samples had the right chemical composition to preserve evidence of ancient life on Mars, if it ever existed.
"It is amazing.
We find organic matter in pretty much every rock," Abigail Allwood, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, told the newspaper.
"Crucially, the conditions in the rock may have supported small communities of microorganisms during any time that water was migrating through the rock," said lead author Michael Tice, a geologist at Texas A&M University.
NASA scientists study rock samples from Mars
However, the discovery of organic matter - life-friendly molecules containing combinations of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen - doesn't mean the rover discovered life on Mars.
The molecules can be of both biological and non-biological origin.
Rocks that "Perseverance" has found so far are of volcanic origin.
Jezero Crater was formed by a rock impact on Mars at least 3.5 billion years ago.
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However, the scientists can only be sure when they can examine the rock samples on Earth.
The rocks collected will be brought to Earth after the rover's mission.
An exact timeline for landing the samples is yet to be determined, but scientists expect to be able to study them in the early 2030s.
NASA Mars mission: Rover finds possible evidence of life
"Is it just organic matter that was washed into the system - maybe meteoric material that was just part of the water?
That would be the least exciting.
Or is it small pockets of microbial life that live in the cavities of these rocks?
That would be the most exciting thing," said Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary scientist at Caltech and a contributing writer to The
Washington Post
.
NASA recently made headlines with its moon mission "Artemis 1": The US space agency reports one success after the other and even overshadows "Apollo 13".
