NASA’s Perseverance Rover May Already Have Evidence of Ancient Martian Life

Image caption: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with several of the 10 sample tubes it deposited at a sample depot it is creating within an area of Jezero Crater nicknamed Three Forks. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS. Article by Jonathan O’Callaghan. Scientific American – April 5, 2023.

If life ever existed on Mars, we may already have the answer at hand. In January NASA’s Perseverance rover deposited 10 tubes on the surface of Mars. Each contains a sample of Martian rock that was carefully selected for its potential to clarify chapters of the planet’s still-murky history. Those tubes “are capable of telling us whether Mars was habitable,” says Mitch Schulte, Perseverance’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We see evidence of particular minerals that tell us there was water. Some of these minerals indicate there was organic material.” […]

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