NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has detected the highest concentration of organic molecules to date, which could indicate the presence of microbes in ancient times, and scientists are looking forward to welcoming rock samples back to Earth to confirm.
Although organic matter has also been found on Mars in the past, the new discovery is considered particularly promising because it comes from an area of a lake where sediments and salt are deposited, conditions that could be conducive to the emergence of life, Agence France-Presse reported.
“In all fairness, these will or have been the most valuable we’ve ever collected,” David Shuster, a NASA scientist who will be studying samples recovered from Perseverance, told reporters.
Organic molecules are compounds composed mainly of carbon, often including hydrogen and oxygen, but sometimes other elements, not always produced by biological processes.
Further analysis and conclusions will have to wait until the Mars Sample Return mission, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to bring back rock samples, scheduled for 2033.
The Perseverance Mars rover, nicknamed “Percy”, landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars in February 2021. Its primary mission is to collect signs that may contain ancient life or Martian geology, a sample of past climatic characteristics.
The delta that Perseverance is exploring formed 3.5 billion years ago and is currently detecting sedimentary rocks, which are made up of grains of various sizes that have deposited in the aqueous environment of the time.
Perseverance collected two samples from a 1 meter wide rock known as Wildcat Ridge and on July 20 smoothed part of its surface and analyzed it with ultraviolet spectroscopy.
The analysis revealed a class of organic molecules called aromatics, which play a key role in biochemistry.
▲ Perseverance collects rock samples at “Wildcat Ridge”. (Photo taken fromfacebook.com/NASAPersevere）。
“It’s a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on other planets,” said NASA astrobiologist Sunanda Sharma. “The staff is a clue and the clues we get are getting stronger … Personally I think these results were very moving, we felt in the right place with the right tool at a very critical moment”.
Other tantalizing clues to the possibility of life have been found on Mars in the past, such as the repeated detection of methane by Curiosity, the predecessor of the Perseverance rover. However, while methane is a byproduct of microbial digestion on Earth, it can also be produced by thermal reactions that don’t involve living organisms.
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