The Perseverance rover has reached a major milestone in its search for traces of ancient life on Mars with the collection of the “most valuable” samples yet, containing potential biosignatures that will need to be confirmed once on Earth, NASA announced Thursday. .
A potential biosignature may have been produced in the presence of life, but also in the absence of life. To consider this biological signature definitive, these samples will have to be analyzed by powerful laboratory instruments on Earth. NASA plans to bring them back, thanks to another mission, by 2033.
“I think it’s safe to say that these will be, and already are, the most valuable rock samples ever collected,” said David Shuster, who works at a news conference on these samples.
“The Basics of Life”
Two cores were taken by drilling a rock called “Wildcat ridge”, approximately one meter high and located in a delta that formed about 3.5 billion years ago, at the meeting of a river and an ancient lake. This rock is particularly interesting because it is a sedimentary rock, which appears to have been formed when the lake water evaporated.
“Wildcat ridge” therefore has “high potential for a conservation biosignature,” said David Shuster of the University of California, Berkeley.
Analyzed separately by an instrument at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm, the rock revealed the presence of organic compounds, the most abundant detected since the start of the mission a year and a half ago.
These compounds made in particular of carbon, and which may also contain hydrogen, “are the building blocks of life,” said Ken Farley, head of the mission’s science side.
The rover detected them in smaller numbers during previous analyzes in the Jézéro crater, which contained the lake, but “as we go further into the delta, the ‘clues get stronger and stronger,'” summed up Sunanda Sharma, a scientist at Jet. NASA Propulsion Laboratory.
“Personally, I find these results very moving, because it seems that we are in the right place, with the right instruments, at a crucial time,” he said.
“We don’t yet know the significance of these finds, but these rocks are exactly what we’re looking for,” Ken Farley concluded.
Source: BFM TV
