NASA rover finds the strongest evidence of ancient life on Mars

A sample obtained by NASA’s firm Rover of Rock was formed billions of years before the sediment at the bottom of a lake, which according to scientists includes possible signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, although minerals spotted in the sample can also be formed through non-biological processes.

The detailed discovery in the research published on Wednesday represents one of the best pieces of this possibility that the Earth’s planet neighbor once disturbed life.

Since landing on the Martian surface in 2021, the six-wheel rover has been searching for the Jezero Crater, an area in the northern hemisphere of the planet that was once flooded with an ancient lake basin with water and home, as it wants signs of ancient life. Firmness is collecting rock and loose material samples called resolith and analyzed with various onboard devices.

The Rover received the new described sample, called the Neelam Canian Sample, called the Bright Angel Rock Formation. This formation consists of fine-grain mudstone and coarse-oriented groups, a type of sedimentary rock that is made of gravel-shaped particles, which is simultaneously cement by fine-and-fine sediment.

Stony Brook University’s planetary scientist Joel Hurroitz, who led Study published in journal NatureSaid that a “potential biosignecher” was detected in multi-year-old sedimentary rocks.

It has come in the form of two minerals that appear as a result of the chemical reactions between the formation of the bright angel and the mud of organic materials, which are also present in the mud, Hurovitz said. They are: Vivianite, an iron phosphate mineral, and gregite, an iron sulfide mineral.

“These reactions have occurred shortly after the mud accumulates on the lake. On Earth, reactions like these, which add organic matter and chemical compounds to mud to make new minerals such as vivianite and gregite, are often operated by activity of germs,” ​​said Hurovitz.

“Gynenas are consuming organic matter in these settings and producing these new minerals as a sub -product of their metabolism,” said Hurovitz.

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But Hurovitz offered some words of caution.

“Reasons, however, we cannot claim that it is more than a potential bioscnecher, there are chemical processes that can cause similar reactions in the absence of biology, and we cannot fully rule the processes based on rover data,” Hurovitz said.

Mars has not always been an inhuman place, which is with liquid water on its surface in a distant past. Scientists suspect that microbial life could once live in Jestero Crater. They believe that the river channels spread to the pit wall and built a lake over 3.5 billion years ago.

Look Meet Mars samples: Neelam Valley (Sample 25): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9blhvjkoog.

The sample of the Neelam Valley was collected from a set of rocky outflows on the edges of Nerva Valis in July 2024, which is an ancient river valley carved out of water in Jezero Crater.

The sample collected and analyzed by firmness provides a new example of a type of potential bioscnecher that the research community can try to understand whether these characteristics were formed by life or not, Hurovitz said, “Or alternately, whether nature has conspired to present the characteristics of the activity of life.”

“Finally, follow-on research will provide us with a suit of testable hypotheses to determine whether biology is responsible for the generation of these characteristics in the formation of a bright fairy, which we can check by checking samples of sapphire if it is back to Earth,” Hurroitz said.