According to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), scientists working on the findings of the Perseverance rover have discovered a rock that shows signs that it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago.
The arrowhead-shaped rock, named Cheyava Falls by scientists after a waterfall in the Grand Canyon, contains interesting features that could provide clues as to whether Mars hosted microscopic life in the past.
Analyses using the instruments of the Perseverance rover showed that the 1 meter long and 60 centimetre wide rock bore traces that correspond to the definition of ancient life.
The area discovered by the rover contains traces of water and life that may have existed billions of years ago.
The rocks were found to indicate that flowing water existed in the area explored by the rover billions of years ago and to have chemical signatures and structures likely created by life forms.
Cheyava Falls, the 22nd rock sample examined by Perseverance, was found on July 21 while exploring the northern edge of the Neretva Vallis, a 400-meter-wide ancient river valley formed long ago by water flowing into the Jezero crater.
After repeatedly scanning Cheyava Falls with the rover's Raman and Luminescence Scanning of Habitable Environments for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, it was found to contain organic compounds.
It has been found that these carbon-based molecules are considered the building blocks of life, but can also be formed by non-biological processes.
Traces of Cheyava Falls are also found in rocks on Earth that contain fossilized traces of microbes
“Cheyava Falls is the most surprising, complex, and potentially most important rock examined by Perseverance to date,” said Ken Farley, a Perseverance project collaborator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The organic materials are distinctly colored, suggesting chemical reactions that microbial life can use as an energy source.” “While we have made the first compelling findings that the water necessary for life and water flows over the rock, we have not yet fully figured out how the rock was formed and to what extent.” The nearby rocks heated 'Cheyava Falls' and contributed to these features,” he said.
Cheyava Falls has large veins of white calcium sulfate running through the rock, with streaks of material between them indicating the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty red color.
A closer examination of the red areas in question also revealed many irregularly shaped, millimetre-sized cream-coloured spots surrounded by black substances resembling a leopard pattern.
Perseverance's Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) found that these black halos contain both iron and phosphate.
“These sites are a big surprise. On Earth, such rock features are often associated with the fossilized remains of microbes living underground,” David Flannery, an astrobiologist at the University of Queensland in Australia who is part of the Perseverance team, said.
Leopard patterns could also have been created by the influence of magma on the planet
On the other hand, it is also possible that the millimeter-sized olivine crystals and sulfates detected in the rock were formed by the crystallization of magma on the planet and, at uninhabitable temperatures, became attached to the rock, forming leopard patterns through non-biological processes.
Scientists are also evaluating other views on the observed traces and note that further research is needed for a definitive discovery of ancient life.
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