on September 17, 2022 at 5:43 p.m.
September 17, 2022 at 5:35 PM
After being on Mars for more than a year and a half, the Perseverance robot, sent by NASA, has finally discovered potential traces of life. This is revealed Futura-Sciences on Thursday, September 15, 2022.
Sent by NASA to find traces of past or present life on the planet Mars, the Perseverance rover may have succeeded in its mission. Futura-Sciences reveals on Thursday, September 15, 2022 that some samples collected by the robot would contain traces of life. More specifically, these would be biosignatures, chemical traces present in the soil or the atmosphere, which would explain the presence of a present or past form of life.
rock samples
Perseverance was sent by NASA researchers mainly to collect and analyze rocks, even ifhe happened to come across human waste. He landed in the Jezero crater, which is over 45 kilometers in diameter, as the area had been identified as an ancient lake. Since September 2021, the rover began its collection with sometimes some successes, such as when the robot succeeded in making oxygen.
Since July 2022, astronomers have moved the rover to a new region, the delta of an ancient river. It was here that the robot made the discovery of sedimentary rocks, very different from what it had found since. On Twitter, NASA researchers are delighted with this discovery and say thatthese are the “most valuable rock samples ever collected “.
Why are we so excited about new Mars rock samples collected by @NASAPersevere? Some have the highest concentration of organics this rover has ever seen.
This doesn’t necessarily mean life—we’ve got to bring them back to find out. Here are the next steps: https://t.co/uWyaZbvQzmpic.twitter.com/SLsYbxrcwY
— NASA (@NASA) September 15, 2022
Ongoing analyzes
The samples in question come from a rock about a meter wide, which has been dubbed “Wildcat Ridge“. It was formed from mud and fine sand in an evaporating salt water lake. The first chemical analyzes carried out indicate that these pieces of rock contain organic molecules, like no other sample before.
According to NASA, they would be aromatics linked to sulphates, molecules capable of preserving the memory of the environments in which they appeared. Further analyzes still need to be carried out to learn more about this discovery, which would tell us that we may not be the only living beings in the universe. Still another Nasa mystery that needs to be solved.