Nasa March Rover Perseverance revealed rocks in a dry river channel which can contain potential signs of ancient microscopic life, scientists reported on Wednesday.
They stressed that an in -depth analysis is necessary for the sample gathered by perseverance – ideally in the laboratories on Earth – before drawing conclusions.
“Today, we really show you how we are a little closer to the answer … Are we really alone in the universe,” said NASA associate administrator Nicky Fox on Wednesday morning.
Wandering March since 2021, rover cannot directly detect life. Instead, he transports an exercise to enter rocks and tubes to contain the samples collected in places deemed most suited to the organization of life billions of years ago. The samples await recovery on earth – an ambitious plan which is pending because NASA seeks cheaper and faster options.
Call him an “exciting discovery”, a pair of scientists who were not involved in the study – Janice Bishop of Seti Institute and Mario Parente of the University of Massachusetts Amherst – quickly stressed that non -biological processes could be responsible.
“This is part of the reason why we cannot go so far as to say:` `a-ha, this is positive proof of life ”, the principal researcher Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University told the Associated Press.” All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of characteristics that we see. “”
NASA / Handout via Reuters
Anyway, Hurowitz said he was the best most convincing candidate to date in the search for the rover of the potential signs of longtime life. It was the 25th sample gathered; The counting is now up to 30, with six others to do.
“It would be incredible to be able to demonstrate in a conclusive way that these characteristics were formed by something that was alive on another planet billions of years ago, right?” Said Hurowitz. But even if it is not the case, it is “a precious lesson in all the ways that nature can conspire to deceive us”.
Collected last summer, the sample is from reddish mudstones rich in clay in Neretva Vallis, a river channel which formerly wore water in Jezero crater. This outcrop of sedimentary rock, known as Bright Angel training, was questioned by the scientific instruments of Perseverance before the exit of the exercise.
With organic carbon, an element of life of life, Hurowitz and his team found tiny spots, poppy seeds and leopard spots, enriched with iron phosphate and iron sulfide. On Earth, these chemical compounds are by-products when microorganisms chomp on organic matter.
The results appeared in the Nature Journal.
Ten of the titanium sample tubes were placed on the Martian surface a few years ago as a backup of the rest aboard the rover, the main target of the still vague return mission of NASA.
When perseverance was launched in 2020, NASA expected the return to earth samples in the early 2030s. But this date slipped in the 2040s when costs swelled at $ 11 billion, blocking the recovery effort.
Until the samples are transported in March by robotic spacecrafts or astronauts, scientists will have to rely on terrestrial stands and laboratory experiences to assess the feasibility of ancient Martian life, according to Hurowitz.
On earth, microorganisms generally interact with minerals in Antarctic lakes.
“There is no proof of microbes on March today, but if another had been present on the old March, they may also have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake in Jezero Crater,” wrote Bishop and Parente in an editorial that accompanies him.
