NASA’s Mars rover captures rock that may hold fossilized microbes

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has made what may be its most surprising discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.

The six-wheeled robotic explorer came across an intriguing arrow-shaped rock called “Uvara Cheyava” that may harbor fossilized microbes from billions of years ago, when Mars was a water world.

The probe drilled into the enigmatic rock to collect a core sample on July 21 while traversing the Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley.

The samples carefully placed under the rover’s belly are destined to eventually return to Earth, where they will undergo more comprehensive analysis.

“Uvara Cheyava is the most strange, complex and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance,” project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech said Thursday.

Three compelling data have scientists buzzing.

White veins of calcium sulfate run the length of the rock, a telltale sign that water once flowed through it.

Between these veins is a reddish middle zone filled with organic compounds, as detected by the rover’s SHERLOC (Scanning of Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument.

Finally, small white spots surrounded by black, reminiscent of leopard spots, contain chemicals that suggest energy sources for ancient microbes, according to scans from the PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instrument.

“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with fossilized records of microbes living underground,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Persistence science team from Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

However, the search to confirm ancient Martian life is far from over.

The real test will come when samples of Perseverance’s gems are returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return Program, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, planned for the 2030s.

While there are alternative explanations for these findings that don’t involve microbes, there’s a tantalizing chance that Perseverance’s core sample could contain actual fossilized microbes—potentially making history as the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

“We’ve hit that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from almost every angle imaginable,” Farley said.

“Scientifically, Persistence has nothing more to give. To fully understand what really happened in that Martian river valley in Jezero Crater billions of years ago, we would like to bring the sample of Cheyava Falls back to Earth , so that it can be studied with powerful instruments available in laboratories.”

© 2024 AFP