What scientists have been waiting for has been happening for a long time. NASA rover found organic matter on Mars • Science and space / inStory.cz

While scientists can’t immediately go to the lab and subject the collected sample to a detailed examination, it is still a huge step forward. The Perseverance rover has deposited the sample in another capsule, which, along with the others, will return to Earth in some time, and then all samples will be carefully examined.

“The rocks we looked at in the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter we’ve found on the mission so far,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley said at a NASA news conference. “And of course, organic molecules are the building blocks of life, so it’s all very interesting that we have rocks that have settled in a habitable environment in a lake that carries organic matter.”

With four samples collected in the delta, which scientists believe is the former bottom of the lake, the Perseverance rover has now collected a total of 12 samples. And some others are going to be stored in empty capsules.

It is a reward for the fact that scientists have brilliantly chosen not only the landing site of the Perseverance rover, but also its exploration area. This is the Jezero crater, in which the delta in question is located, which is about 3.5 million years old, of course it is only an estimate. However, scientists believe this is where the confluence of the Martian River and the lake once stood.

The Perseverance rover is now in the second phase of its exploration and is therefore studying the delta where it found these organic materials. While organic matter has previously been found on Mars, found by both the Perseverance rover and the older Curiosity rover, the latter discovery was made in an area where sediments and salts were deposited in a lake in the distant past. under conditions where life could potentially exist.

Ken Farley himself said in a NASA press conference that, for example, they also found sandstone, which contains grains and fragments of rocks formed away from the Jezero crater, as well as mudstone, which contains interesting organic compounds.

The key discovery was made before the end of July, when the rover analyzed a sample of rock about one meter wide, called Wildcat Ridge, for analysis with an instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC. .

This analysis found that the samples contained a class of organic molecules correlated with sulfate mineral molecules. Sulphate minerals present in sedimentary rock layers can provide significant information on the aquatic environment in which they formed.

“This correlation suggests that when the lake evaporated, both sulfates and organics were deposited, stored and concentrated in the region,” SHERLOC scientist Sunanda Sharma explained at a NASA press conference. “Personally, I find these results very moving because I feel we are in the right place with the right tools at a very crucial moment.”

NASA also said that organic molecules are made up of a wide variety of compounds that are made up mostly of carbon and usually contain hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. And some of these compounds are the basic building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered a potential bio-signature that could be evidence of past life, but could also have formed without the presence of life.

Enthusiastic scientists now have to tame their emotions a bit, because they simply don’t have Mars samples in their hands and have to wait for the Mars Sample Return mission. NASA and the European Space Agency ESA are collaborating on this mission and want to bring the first samples of material from Mars back to Earth for a detailed study. From now on, the plan is that the Sample Return Lander will land near or within Crater Lake and bring a small space rocket into which the Perseverance rover will load the collected samples into capsules and the rocket will bring them back to Earth. However, it won’t be until the second half of this decade.