Nasa rover makes a crucial discovery – “With the right tools in the right place”

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The NASA rover “Perseverance” has been exploring Mars since February 2021 – and has already found organic material. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

In a river delta on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover makes a crucial discovery. But now the researchers have to be patient.

Pasadena – As the US Space Agency NASA a region called Jezero Crater as a landing site for the Perseverance Rover on the Mars selected, those responsible already had a plan: They wanted to use the robot to explore an area that looked like a river delta on images taken in advance by space probes. “Perseverance” has been exploring the delta since July 2022 – and is now providing particularly important samples.

“We chose the Jezero crater for Perseverance’s exploration because we thought it had the best chance of getting scientifically excellent samples,” said NASA Science Director Thomas Zurbuchen, adding: “Now we know that we sent the rover to the right place.” The Mars rover collected an “incredible diversity of samples” that will be brought back to Earth by another Mars mission in the future. “I think it’s safe to say that these are two of the most important samples we’re going to collect on this mission,” said David Shuster, who is responsible for retrieving the samples from Mars.

NASA’s Perseverance rover finds organic material on Mars

The delta in which the Mars rover Perseverance is located was formed about 3.5 billion years ago. It marks the spot where a Martian river flowed into a lake in the past. The Perseverance rover is currently studying the sedimentary rocks in the delta formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once wet environment. “The rocks we examined have the highest concentration of organic matter found during the mission so far,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley said at a NASA press conference. “Organic molecules are the building blocks of life, so it’s very interesting that we have rocks deposited in a lake in a habitable environment that contain organic material.”

The rocks we examined have the highest concentration of organic matter found during the mission so far.

According to NASA, the “Perseverance” instrument SHERLOC already took a sample on July 20, in which the researchers found a class of organic molecules related to sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in sedimentary rocks can provide important information about the aquatic environment in which they were formed. “This relationship suggests that during the evaporation of the lake both sulfates and organic matter were deposited, conserved and concentrated in this area,” explains SHERLOC scientist Sunanda Sharma. “Personally, I find these results so moving because I feel like we’re in the right place at a very crucial time and with the right tools.”

Mars: Organic molecules found in a once habitable region

Nasa uses the term “organic molecules” to describe a large number of compounds that consist mainly of carbon and usually contain hydrogen and oxygen atoms. It can also contain other elements such as nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. However, there are also chemical processes in which such molecules are formed without the involvement of biological life – such a find does not necessarily have to be a sign of earlier life on Mars. In fact, “Perseverance” and its predecessor, the Curiosity Rover already before organic material found on Mars. But the fact that it was found this time in a region that has been shown to have had liquid water in the past, and which could therefore have been habitable, is a crucial clue for the researchers.

“While the detection of this class of organic matter alone doesn’t mean that life was definitely there, these observations are similar to some of the things we’ve seen here on Earth,” explains Sharma. “To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, then organic matter is a lead. And we get stronger and stronger clues as we move through the delta.”

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Nasa and Esa want to get soil samples from Mars to Earth

After such important finds, scientists would like to get to work immediately and examine the material in detail. However, the researchers will have to be patient for a while before they can conduct detailed research on the organic material that has been found. “As capable as our instruments onboard Perseverance are, further conclusions about the contents of the sample will have to await its return to Earth,” says Farley. The so-called Mars Sample Return missionin which Nasa with the European space agency Esa cooperates, is said to have collected Mars samples from “Perseverance”. collect using two small helicopter drones and bring it back to Earth – but not until the 2030s, an exact date has not yet been determined. (tab)

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