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The Perseverance rover has reached a milestone in its search for traces of life on Mars with the collection of “most valuable” samples so farcontaining potential biological signatures to be analyzed on Earth, announced the NASA this Thursday (15).
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This is not yet proof of the existence of past lives on the red planet.but it is the best chance to date of detecting possible ancient microbial life.
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A bio-signature may have been produced by the presence of life, but also by its absence.. To be considered definitive, the samples must be analyzed by powerful laboratory instruments on Earth.
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A NASA plans to bring the samples back to Earth through another mission before 2033.
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“I think we can say that they will be, and already are, the most valuable rock samples ever collected,” David Shuster, a scientist working on these samples, said at a news conference.
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Two cuts were made by drilling into a rock called the “wildcat ridge”, about one meter large and located in a delta formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the intersection of a river and an ancient lake.
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(VIDEO: The robot of perseverance makes a new discovery on Mars.)
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The robot of perseverance makes a new discovery on Mars
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It is particularly interesting because it is a sedimentary rock that appears to have formed when the lake water evaporated.
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Even “Wildcat ridge” has “a great potential for the conservation of the bio-signature”said Shuster, an expert at the University of California at Berkeley.
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Analyzed separately by an instrument at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm, the rock revealed the presence of organic compounds, the highest amount detected since the mission began a year and a half ago.
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These compounds – made mostly of carbon and which may contain hydrogen – “are the essential elements of life,” said Ken Farley, head of the scientific part of the mission.
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These elements have been detected in far fewer numbers by the rover during previous analyzes at Jezero crater, where the lake was located, but “as we go deeper into the delta, the indices get stronger,” summarized Sunanda Sharma of the Propulsion Laboratory. . from NASA.
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“Personally, I find these results very impressive, as it seems we are in the right place with the right tools at a crucial time,” he said.
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“We don’t know the significance of these results yet, but these rocks are exactly what we’re looking for,” Farley concluded.
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