NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has collected and stored samples of rocks made up of minerals and organic compounds that, on Earth, would likely preserve traces of past microbial life, researchers said Thursday.
has collected and stored samples of rocks made up of minerals and organic compounds that, on Earth, would likely preserve traces of past microbial life, researchers said Thursday. The soil samples were gathered at the base of an ancient river delta fanning out from the rim of But to find out if any such"potential biosignatures" include actual traces of past life on Mars, scientists will have to wait for a NASA-European Space Agency mission at the end of the decade to collect them and bring them back to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis.
Two areas at the base of an ancient delta just inside Jezero Crater on Mars where the Perseverance rover has collected samples that may contain traces of past microbial life. To find out one way or the other, NASA and the European Space Agency plan to retrieve the rover's samples and return them to Earth for analysis in the early 2030s."The samples that we've collected as we presented here today ... have ingredients for life in terms of the environmental setting," said David Shuster, a Perseverance return sample scientist at the University of California. The material was long ago transported into Jezero Crater by water and deposited into a 25-mile-wide lake with fine particles that settled out amid phases of evaporation — factors that combine to"have high potential for biosignature preservation." "If these conditions existed, I think, pretty much anywhere on Earth at any point in time over the last ... three and a half billion years, I think it's safe to say, or at least assume, that biology would have done its thing and left its mark in these rocks for us to observe. "And so that's really why we're so excited to be able to address these questions upon returning these samples to laboratories here on Earth," Shuster said."We have all of the right ingredients here." Core samples collected by the Perseverance rover before the rocks were sealed in tubes to await pickup and return to Earth in the early 2030s for detailed laboratory analysis.on February 18, 2021, and has spent the past 18 months working its way toward the base of a fan-like delta cutting through the rim where water once rushed in to fill a broad, now-vanished pool the size of Lake Tahoe. Perseverance is equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments designed to study the ancient lakebed deposits, on the lookout for traces of past microbial life that might have filtered down to be preserved in what are now layers of sedimentary rock. Along with giving scientists an opportunity to remotely survey the rocks and sandy soil of Jezero, Perseverance also is equipped with a complex collection and caching mechanism that can store more than 40 samples of soil and rocky cores, sealing them in small environmentally closed tubes to await transport back to Earth. If all goes well, a joint sample return mission being developed by NASA and the European Space Agency will land another spacecraft near Perseverance around 2030 and either collect the stored samples from the rover or use two small helicopters to pick up sample tubes Perseverance will have dropped onto the surface. The samples will be loaded onto a small rocket and blasted into Mars orbit where they will be captured by another spacecraft and returned to Earth for analysis to determine if any of the"potential biosignatures" are actual traces of past microbial life. "Mars sample return stands maybe the best chance ever of answering a very profound question: are we alone in the universe?" said Sunanda Sharma, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who works with one of the rover's instruments.
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