Scientists collaborating on the mission also said that the rock samples, which the rover temporarily stored in tubes for future return to Earth, had the correct chemical formula. Preserving evidence of ancient Martian life, if ever there was one.
The new persistence research is detailed in three large studies published Wednesday, one in Science and two in Science Advances. It The diary account is highly technical and without hype – it dares to be boring as shit – but the scientists involved have translated it into a more compelling story.
“So fabulous. In almost every rock we find organic matter,” said Abigail Allwood, a geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, who manages the rover and the larger sample return mission to Mars.
One study concluded that the rocks in the crater experienced three distinct events when exposed to water.
“More importantly, the conditions in the rocks whenever water migrates through them can support small communities of microorganisms,” lead author Michael Tice, a geologist at Texas A&M University, said in an email. “We won’t know until we get the samples back to Earth,” he added in a later interview.
persistence does a Bull eye drops to Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021 and have been exploring it ever since, depositing rock samples along the way for later field examination. This is an ambitious multi-stage mission that will require NASA and its partner, the European Space Agency, to send another rover to the Martian surface with the capability to launch samples into orbit. The spacecraft then transports the sample to Earth for laboratory research. An exact timeline has yet to be determined, but NASA hopes to bring the samples home in the early 2030s.
The Mars studio is part of a rapidly growing youth field Astrobiologists, which includes the search for potentially habitable worlds and the first examples of extraterrestrial life. Despite the efforts of generations of scientists and despite the claims of UFO enthusiasts, detecting extraterrestrial life remains an aspiration.
Even finding organic substances — life-friendly molecules mixed with carbon, hydrogen and oxygen — is a far cry from detecting life or even proving its past existence. These molecules can be of biological or non-biological origin.
Mars remains the focus and focus of NASA research because it has many beneficial properties. Mars may have been more like Earth about 3 billion years ago, with much hotter and wetter conditions. Life may have existed on both Earth and Mars simultaneously, and most likely originated on Mars and spread to Earth via meteorites. And even though the surface is now a desert, the planet could have large amounts of liquid water beneath its surface, e Perhaps a “mysterious” life.
While the Perseverance rover doesn’t have the tools to chemically detect living organisms if they exist today, it does give scientists the ability to study the surface of Mars in a level of detail not previously possible.
A new paper examining the chemistry of Mars has come as a surprise to geologists. They assumed they would excavate a mass of sedimentary rock. Instead it is volcanic rock.
Jezero crater was formed in an impact event – a rock that crashed into Mars – at least 3.5 billion years ago. The shallow hole had apparently been filled with water for a long time. This can be determined from the orbital image showing the remains of a delta where a river flows into a lake. Planetary geologists speculate that the crater floor was once covered in sedimentary rock, formed by dirt and debris that slowly accumulated on the lake floor.
If these sedimentary rocks once existed, they are gone now. Maybe it’s worn out, says Tice. The lack of sedimentary rock could mean the lake is short-lived, which will shock astrobiologists. Life as we know it needs water, and it took some time for more complex life forms to evolve. If the lake doesn’t survive, life may have a hard time taking root.
The volcanic rock does not disappoint, scientists say, as it contains a wealth of information about Mars’ past, including the presence of organic molecules. The presence of organic matter on Mars has been confirmed in previous missions, but its precise properties and chemistry cannot be pinpointed by this kind of remote research and will require laboratory checks on Earth, said Bethany Elleman, Caltech planetary scientist and co. – author of two new articles. . .
“Is it just organic matter from this kind of leaching out of the system, maybe from meteorite material that’s just part of water?”
He added that the rover “has assembled an impressive array of samples to reveal the environmental history of Mars in all its forms: volcanic history, water history, and the relationship between organic matter and that water-rich environment.”
All of this is an attempt to solve a fundamental mystery on Mars: what went wrong? How, when and why did this seemingly habitable planet turn into an inhospitable place? The Red Planet may not be a dead planet — the coroner’s report is incomplete — but it definitely looks like it.
Scientists have demonstrated something that Mars currently lacks: a global magnetic field like Earth’s. Such a field protects Our atmosphere is protected from the corrosive effects of the solar wind: high-energy particles are constantly flowing from the sun that can remove the lightest particles. Mars also lacks plate tectonics, the geological process that recycles the earth’s crust and continuously spews water and nutrient-rich lava through active volcanoes.
Somewhere along the way, Mars’ magnetic field dies, then ends It has become a different kind of planet. It has lost almost all of its atmosphere. It has become a frozen desert world. It is not known how quickly this happened. But this is something that can be revealed by the volcanic rock in the crater.
The magma contains some iron, which is sensitive to the magnetism of the planet. As lava cools, it crystallizes into igneous rock, causing electrons in iron-carrying minerals to freeze in patterns that can reveal characteristics of the magnetic field, such as its direction.
Benjamin Weiss, an MIT planetary scientist and co-author of two papers, said in an email: “In general, we’re really, really lucky to have igneous rocks in craters and we’ve landed directly on them, because they’re really ideal for dating and history study. “Magnetic field past.” towards Mars.”
After a mission is able to send its precious collection of rocks to Earth, scientists may finally know if life has found a foothold on Mars, which will raise new questions about the existence of life, despite the dramatic transformation of the planet. persevere.
