The Mars explorer spacecraft Perseverance, built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, landed on Mars on February 18, about 7 months after launching on July 30, 2020. The vehicle, built as part of the agency’s Mars Exploration Program, made its longest distance walk on Mars in February of this year, at 245.76 meters. Perseverance, which has been researching on Mars for a while, has now caught a very important clue as to whether there is life on Mars.
PERSEVERANCE DISCOVERED ORGANIC MATERIALS ON MARS
According to CNN’s report based on NASA, the Perseverance rover, which is working in the Jezero Crater on Mars, has collected some of the most important samples ever in its mission to determine whether life exists on Mars.
A few of the recently collected samples showed that Jezero Crater contained organic matter, suggesting it had potentially habitable environments 3.5 billion years ago. “The rocks we investigated on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter we found on the mission,” said project scientist Ken Farley.
The mission team named one of the rocks Perseverance sampled Wildcat Ridge. The rock in question was probably formed billions of years ago as a result of mud and fine sand settling into the evaporating saltwater lake. The tool scraped the surface of the rock and analyzed it with an instrument known as the Screening for Habitable Environments for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC).
The analysis revealed that the organic minerals are likely stable carbon and hydrogen molecules bound to aromatics or sulfates. It was stated that sulfate minerals, which are usually compressed in layers of sedimentary rocks, preserve information about the aqueous environments they form.
Perseverance and Curiosity instruments have previously found organic matter on Mars. This time, however, the detection took place in a region where life may once have existed.