NASA discovers first ‘potential’ indicators of historic life on Mars
NASA‘s Mars rover has discovered the first ‘possible’ signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
The agency’s Perseverance rover spotted a what they described as an arrowhead-shaped’ rock with what looked like veins flowing through it.
Scientists determined it featured chemical signatures and structures formed by microbial life billions of years ago.
The rover beamed the images back to Earth, revealing crystalline solids left over from water flowing on the surface and a reddish area that contained organic compounds and an energy source for ‘what could have been microbial life.’
The rock, which measures 3.2 feet by two feet, has been named after a Grand Canyon waterfall Cheyava Falls.
Perseverance spotted a vein-filled arrowhead-shaped rock that featured chemical signatures and structures formed by microbial life billions of years ago
Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, said: ‘Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance.
‘On the one hand, we have our first compelling detection of organic material, distinctive colorful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water — necessary for life — once passed through the rock.
‘On the other hand, we have been unable to determine exactly how the rock formed and to what extent nearby rocks may have heated Cheyava Falls and contributed to these features.’
Perseverance collected the rock on July 21 while exploring the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater, a lake 3.7 billion years ago.
The team noticed the vein-like structures throughout, finding they were white calcium sulfate.
The crystalline solids on the Martian surface are hard-water deposits left behind by ancient groundwater flowing through the now dusty landscape.
Between those veins were bands of material with a reddish color suggesting the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue.
Perseverance collected the rock on July 21 while exploring the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater, a lake 3.7 billion years ago
The rover took a core sample of the rock (where the dark hole on the left is located) to investigate
A deeper look at the reddish region revealed ‘dozens of irregularly shaped, millimeter-size off-white splotches, each ringed with black material, akin to leopard spots,’ shared NASA.
Perseverance used an X-raying tool to analyze the spots, determining the black halos contained iron and phosphate.
David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team, said: ‘These spots are a big surprise.
‘On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.’
The Perseverance science team has not come to a complete conclusion, but are weighing different scenarios for what the features about be.
One being that Cheyava Falls was initially deposited as mud with organic compounds mixed in that eventually cemented into rock.
Later, a second episode of fluid flow penetrated fissures in the rock, enabling mineral deposits that created the large white calcium sulfate veins seen today and resulting in the spots.
The leopard spots may be signs of ancient life. The olivine might be related to rocks that were formed farther up the rim of the river valley and that may have been produced by crystallization of magma
‘While organic matter and the leopard spots are of great interest, they aren’t the only aspects of the Cheyava Falls rock confounding the science team,’ shared NASA.
‘They were surprised to find that these veins were filled with millimeter-sized crystals of olivine, a mineral that forms from magma.
‘The olivine might be related to rocks that were formed farther up the rim of the river valley and that may have been produced by crystallization of magma.
‘If so, the team has another question to answer: Could the olivine and sulfate have been introduced to the rock at uninhabitable high temperatures, creating an abiotic chemical reaction that resulted in the leopard spots?’
The science team is now hoping to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories.
