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NASA’s Perseverance rover found potential evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.
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Scientists must bring the rock to Earth for further study, but three key features make it promising.
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The discovery is a crucial victory for NASA after a series of budget cuts and mission setbacks.
NASA captured a piece of rock on Mars that could one day be the first clear evidence of alien life.
To be clear, NASA is not declaring that it has discovered Martian life. Instead, it is The Perseverance rover drilled a sample of a rock with attributes that could have come from ancient microbial activities, the agency announced Thursday.
To confirm their suspicions, scientists would need bring the rock sample to Earth and study it in more detail.
“This is exactly the type of sample we wanted to find,” said Katie Stack Morgan, chief scientist at the Mission of Perseverancetold Business Insider.
3 Key Features Could Point to Alien Life
The rock, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, has three critical features:
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First, the white veins of calcium sulfate are clear evidence that water has already passed through it.
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Second, the rock tested positive for organic compounds, which are the building blocks of carbon-based life as we know it.
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Third, it is peppered with tiny “leopard spots” that point to chemical reactions associated with microbial life here on Earth.
However, both the organic material and the leopard spots could have come from non-biological processes. That’s why scientists need to study the sample more closely on Earth to know for sure.
The rover has reached the limit of what it can learn about the rock.
“We’re not saying there’s life on Mars, but we’re seeing something that’s compelling as a potential biosignature,” said Stack Morgan.
A biosignature is any characteristic that points to the presence of life.
“This is a very significant discovery,” she added.
It’s a much-needed victory for the space agency. In recent months, NASA has been hit after hit by budget constraints and technical errors on missions.
NASA needs this victory
At the beginning of this year, the first attempt to return to the moon since 1972 it has failed. Astrobotic’s NASA-funded Peregrine lunar mission suffered a fuel leak shortly after launch, forcing it to return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. (The next attempt, a mission from company Intuitive Machinesalso funded by NASA, successfully landed on the Moon.)
Then, new budget decisions were made. NASA’s 2025 Budget Proposal Effectively defunds the Chandra X-ray Observatorywhich is still a highly productive and functional mission.
And last week, NASA officials announced they were dismantling the VIPER lunar rover which the agency has already spent $450 million to build. NASA plans to disassemble it and reuse some of the parts for future lunar missions.
Meanwhile, two astronauts were trapped on the International Space Station for 51 days because the NASA-funded Boeing spacecraft that transported them there is leaking helium and experiencing thruster malfunctions.
Even Perseverance was not spared. In April, NASA announced it was canceling its $11 billion plan to send a follow-up mission, called Mars Sample Return, to collect the rover’s tubes of Martian rock and transport them back to Earth. This was the plan that could have brought scientists the Cheyava Falls rock sample.
Instead, NASA is asking companies to intervene and propose their own cheaper and faster versions of the mission.
The rock of Cheyava Falls especially needs extra study.
“This rock is also one of the most complex rocks we have ever seen on the surface of Mars. There’s a lot going on in this rock,” said Stack Morgan.
IAre they aliens? Check the CoLD scale
For now, this discovery is just the “first step” on the seven-step scale of “confidence in detecting life” (CoLD).
The CoLD scale is an approximate rating of scientific confidence in any potential discovery of alien life.
“We took ourselves to the beginning of that scale, and I think that’s what the rover was sent to Mars for,” Stack Morgan said.
A possible biosignature may reach higher levels of confidence as evidence increases. For example, if scientists can confirm that known non-biological processes did not create leopard spots, the Cheyava Falls rock could move up to stage two or three.
But they need to get the sample to Earth first. And NASA needs to figure out how to do that.
“We hope our latest sample can contribute to the conversation about whether this effort is worth it,” said Stack Morgan. “And we believe so.”
Read the original article at Business Insider
