NASA’s Perseverance for Scientists MarsToday’s rover reported that the rover had collected several tempting organic rock samples from an old river delta on Red Planet.
The samples were now stored for a future mission, which will hope to retrieve them and bring them back to Earth in the first ever Mars sample return.
“The rocks we have been studying on the delta contain the highest concentrations of organic matter we have ever found on the mission,” Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, stated during a press conference held on Thursday, September 15.
“And organic molecules are the building blocks for life. It is therefore very fascinating that there are rocks which were deposited in a living environment in a lake and that contain organic matter.”
With four samples from the delta (which scientists believe to be a former lakebed), the rover now has 12 total samples. Each sample can be viewed in greater detail here Visit this NASA website.
Jezero Crater was the landing site of the rover. It is home to a fan-shaped Delta that formed approximately 3.5 billion year ago at what appears like the convergence between a Martian River & a lake.
Perseverance is currently researching the delta’s sedimentary stones, which formed from particles of different sizes that settled in the once-watery atmosphere. The rover’s first science campaign found igneous rocks, which form deep below the surface from magma and volcanic activity.
The rover is now in its second science campaign and studying the delta for organic materials. Perseverance as well as Curiosity rover have found organics before, but this latest detection was made at an area where sediment and salts may have been deposited in a lake in the distant past under conditions that could have supported life.
Farley said that for example, they found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.
“Wildcat Ridge” refers to a 3 foot (1 meter) tall rock that was likely formed as fine sand and mud in an evaporating saltwater pool billions of years ago.
On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.
SHERLOC’s analysis revealed that the samples contained a class organic molecules that were correlated with those found in sulfate mineral. The layers of sedimentary rocks that contain sulfate minerals can provide valuable information about their formation environment.
Sunanda Sharma (SHERLOC scientist) stated during the press conference that the correlation indicated that both organics and sulfates were present in the area when the lake evaporated. These results are so inspiring to me because they make it feel like we’re at the right time with the right tools.
NASA states that organic molecules include a variety of compounds, mainly carbon-based. They also contain hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements such as sulfur, phosphorus and nitrogen.
Although there are many chemical processes that can produce these molecules, not all of them require life, some compounds are crucial chemical building blocks to life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, in a press release.
“These two science campaigns yielded an incredible diversity of samples that we can bring back to Earth via the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
NASA and European Space Agency (ESA), are cooperating to develop ways of working together. Send the first Mars material samples back to Earth.. The plan for the Sample Return Lander to land in Jezero Crater is currently underway. It will bring a small rocket with which Perseverance’s samples would be loaded.
Two Ingenuity-like helicopters could be used to retrieve samples from Mars’ surface. Once the sample cache has been lifted off Mars, another spacecraft would catch it in Mars orbit and return it to Earth. It could be as early as the mid 2030s.
These samples, first collected and then returned, could help answer the key question: Did life ever exist on Mars?
This article was originally published in Universe Today. Please read the Original article.
