Scientists with NASA's Perseverance Mars rover said today that the rover has collected several tantalizing organic rock samples from an ancient river delta on the Red Planet.
rover said today that the rover has collected several tantalizing organic rock samples from an ancient river delta on the Red Planet.
"And of course, organic molecules are the building blocks of life, so this is all very interesting that we have rocks that were deposited in a habitable environment in a lake which carry organic matter." Now in its second science campaign, the rover is studying the delta, where it has found organic materials. While organics have been found on Mars before by both Perseverance and the Curiosity rover, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed.
What SHERLOC's analysis found is that the samples contain a class of organic molecules that are correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the watery environments in which they formed. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don't require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
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