NASA’s Mars rover has discovered the first ‘possible’ signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
The agency’s Perseverance rover spotted a what they described as an arrowhead-shaped’ rock with what looked like veins flowing through it.
Scientists determined it featured chemical signatures and structures formed by microbial life billions of years ago.
The rover beamed the images back to Earth, revealing crystalline solids left over from water flowing on the surface and a reddish area that contained organic compounds and an energy source for ‘what could have been microbial life.’
The rock, which measures 3.2 feet by two feet, has been named after a Grand Canyon waterfall Cheyava Falls.
Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, said: ‘Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance.
‘On the one hand, we have our first compelling detection of organic material, distinctive colorful spots indicative of chemical reactions that microbial life could use as an energy source, and clear evidence that water — necessary for life — once pᴀssed through the rock.
‘On the other hand, we have been unable to determine exactly how the rock formed and to what extent nearby rocks may have heated Cheyava Falls and contributed to these features.’
Perseverance collected the rock on July 21 while exploring the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater, a lake 3.7 billion years ago.
The team noticed the vein-like structures throughout, finding they were white calcium sulfate.
The crystalline solids on the Martian surface are hard-water deposits left behind by ancient groundwater flowing through the now dusty landscape.
Between those veins were bands of material with a reddish color suggesting the presence of hemaтιтe, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue.
A deeper look at the reddish region revealed ‘dozens of irregularly shaped, millimeter-size off-white splotches, each ringed with black material, akin to leopard spots,’ shared NASA.
Perseverance used an X-raying tool to analyze the spots, determining the black halos contained iron and phosphate.
David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team, said: ‘These spots are a big surprise.
‘On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often ᴀssociated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.’
The Perseverance science team has not come to a complete conclusion, but are weighing different scenarios for what the features about be.
One being that Cheyava Falls was initially deposited as mud with organic compounds mixed in that eventually cemented into rock.
Later, a second episode of fluid flow penetrated fissures in the rock, enabling mineral deposits that created the large white calcium sulfate veins seen today and resulting in the spots.
