NASA's Mars rover has discovered a rock on the surface of the Red Planet that shows possible signs of ancient life once existing on Earth's desolate neighbor.
The team monitoring the progress of NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed in the Jezero Crater in early 2021, is excited over the discovery of a rock that shows three signs of possible evidence of ancient microbial life once existing on Mars. The signs the rover discovered are often associated with the Earth's fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface, and never before has NASA found all three together.
NASA explains via the above video that one of the first signs of possible microbial life is the discovery of calcium sulfate veins running up and down the rock. Calcium sulfate veins are "clear" evidence that water once ran through the rock. This discovery coincides with the overall theory that Mars was once home to large quantities of running water systems that caused the landscape observed by Perseverance to resemble dried up river systems similar to what is seen on Earth.
Next, Perseverance's Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument detected organic compounds within the reddish section of the rock. Additionally, the rover's Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) instrument determined the "leopard" spots seen across the rock are caused by reactions that are typically associated with the production of energy sources on Earth.
"Spotting of this type on sedimentary terrestrial rocks can occur when chemical reactions involving hematite turn the rock from red to white. Those reactions can also release iron and phosphate, possibly causing the black halos to form. Reactions of this type can be an energy source for microbes, explaining the association between such features and microbes in a terrestrial setting," writes NASA
Morgan Cable, a scientist on NASA's Perseverance rover team, said in a video posted to the NASA JPL YouTube channel, "We have never seen these three things together on Mars before."