NASA's Perseverance rover has found rocks on the surface of Mars that contain organic molecules and which, according to the experts of the American space agency, could be "a possible signature of life", that is, attributable "to a substance or structure that could testify to the existence of a past life on the red planet, but which could also have been produced without there being life ".
The mission leaders announced today at an online press conference.
The organic molecules, found by the Perseverance rover in the Jezero crater it has been exploring for a year, are not biological molecules, but comprise a variety of compounds: primarily carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, but also nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur.
They are therefore precursor molecules, possible building blocks of biological molecules, but not necessarily such.
The experts of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Jpl) of NASA, responsible for the activity of the Perseverance rover, specify that such molecules can be produced by chemical processes that do not involve the presence of life.
The rocks that contain organic molecules are four and are part of the 12 so far collected by the NASA rover in its first year of activity on Mars,
in the Jezero crater and destined to be brought to Earth in the future, by the Mars Sample Return (Mrs) mission. which is scheduled to launch in 2027, said Lori Glaze, director of NASA's division of planetary sciences.