A new study in the journal Nature detailing chemicals found in rocks on the surface of Mars could be among the strongest evidence for life having been on the surface.
The team says it's still too early to confirm life was on the surface.
That’s why the team called them “potential biosignatures.” They require more data before a conclusion can be reached.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” said Jim Bell, principal investigator on the Mastcam-Z on the Mars Perseverance rover that landed on the red planet in 2021.
He said the rover collected samples from an area that had water long ago. The samples contained iron and sulfur based minerals, which also provided some of the earliest chemical evidence for life on Earth.
The minerals collected can come from chemical reactions heating up iron minerals with sulfur and water hitting high temperatures.
But Bell says, “We've looked for other evidence in the rocks and minerals around this area, as well as the historical remote sensing and other evidence in this place where the rover is on Mars. And we don't see evidence that tells us that the rocks were cooked to those high temperatures, there’s other kinds of minerals for example and other chemical signatures that would have been wiped out.”
Bell says confirming life would take a dedicated mission, which the Perseverance Rover is providing NASA with some of the information needed for the best sites to gather samples from Mars and to return them to Earth.
“To really test that hypothesis, a potential biosignature, we have to bring that sample and the others that the rover has been collecting for us back to the Earth to study in laboratories here on this planet,” he said.
