NASA believes it has found evidence of microbial life in rocks on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered an “intriguing” rock on the surface of Mars that may have harbored microbial life billions of years ago, according to data released Friday by the US space agency.

The stone was collected by a six-wheeled robot on July 21 in the northern region of the Neretva Valley, which is believed to have been an ancient river valley about 400 meters wide millions of years ago.

The space agency explained that initial analyses carried out using the rover’s instruments showed that “the rock has qualities that meet the definition of a possible indicator of ancient life.”

“The rock shows chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by life billions of years ago, when there was flowing water in the area explored by the rover,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said.

The US agency was quick to point out that further investigation was needed to determine whether there were indeed signs of microscopic life in the arrowhead-shaped rock, which measures about 1 metre by 0.6 metres.

And the marks in the rock that suggest possible microscopic life could also have been formed by “non-biological processes,” NASA noted.

Still, the rock, nicknamed Cheyawa Falls, is “the most intriguing, complex and potentially important rock Perseverance has explored to date,” said Ken Farley of the rover’s science team.

Throughout the rock there are large white veins of calcium sulfate, among which is material whose reddish color suggests the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its characteristic rusty hue.

The rover looked closely at these red areas and found “dozens of millimeter-sized, irregularly shaped whitish spots, each surrounded by black material similar to leopard spots,” the space agency explained.

Subsequent analyses by Perseverance’s instruments revealed that these “black halos” contained iron and phosphate, which surprised scientists.

“On Earth, features like these in rocks are often associated with fossils of microbes living underground,” said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team.

Farley reminded that there are still many doubts about the characteristics of the rock they were studying backwards with the rover’s instruments, which have already exhausted their capabilities.

To study it more fully, it needs to be brought back to Earth, which will also allow us to fully understand what happened in Jezero Crater, where Perseverance is located and where water is estimated to have existed millions of years ago.

NASA is in the midst of a campaign to send a sample return mission for Perseverance.

The latest plan he has drawn up would cost up to $11 billion (€10.1 billion at current exchange rates), a daunting budget challenge.