These samples are now being stockpiled for a planned future mission that hopes to retrieve the samples and bring them back to Earth for the first sample return from Mars. “The rocks we’re investigating in the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter we’ve found yet on the mission,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley said during a press conference Thursday, Sept. 15. “And of course, organic molecules are the building blocks of life, so this is very interesting that we have rocks that were deposited in a habitable environment in a lake that transports organic matter.” With the four samples collected in the delta, which scientists believe was a former lake bed, the rover has now collected a total of 12 samples. You can see more details about each sample on this NASA website. The rover’s landing site, Jezero Crater, is home to this fan-shaped delta that formed about 3.5 billion years ago in what appears to be the convergence of a Martian river and lake. Perseverance is currently exploring the delta’s sedimentary rocks, which formed when particles of various sizes settled into the once-aquatic environment. During its first science expedition, the rover explored the crater floor, finding igneous rocks, which form deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity on the surface. Now on its second science expedition, the rover is studying the delta, where it found organic materials. While organics have been found on Mars in the past by both the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, this latest detection was in an area where, in the distant past, sediments and salts had been deposited in a lake under conditions in which it could potentially have existed Zoe. Farley said that, for example, they found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes interesting organic compounds. Wildcat Ridge (lower left) and Skinner Ridge (upper right). (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS) “Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled into an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover skimmed part of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC. What SHERLOC’s analysis found is that the samples contain a class of organic molecules that correlate with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfite minerals found in sedimentary rock layers can provide important information about the aquatic environments in which they formed. “This correlation suggests that when the lake evaporated, both sulfates and organics were deposited, preserved and concentrated in this region,” SHERLOC scientist Sunanda Sharma said during the press briefing. “I personally find these results so exciting because we feel like we are in the right place with the right tools at a very critical time.” NASA said that organic molecules are made up of a wide variety of compounds that are mostly made up of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They may also contain other elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that do not require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these particular molecules is considered a potential biosignature—a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life, but may also have been produced without the presence of life. “We chose Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate science officer in Washington. in a press release. “These first two science missions have yielded an amazing variety of samples that will be brought back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.” NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are collaborating on planning ways to bring the first samples of Martian material back to Earth for detailed study. As of now, the plan is for a Sample Return Lander to land near or at Jezero Crater, carrying a small rocket to load the samples collected by Perseverance. Two Ingenuity-type helicopters would provide a secondary sample recovery capability on the surface of Mars. Once the sample cache is blasted off the Red Planet, another spacecraft will capture it in Mars orbit and then bring it back to Earth, perhaps in the early to mid-2030s. These first samples collected and returned could answer a key question: was there ever life on Mars? This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
