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NASA says Mars sample shows strongest signs of life
A rock collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover may hold the strongest evidence of life beyond Earth ever found, officials said Wednesday.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. - A rock collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover may hold the strongest evidence of life beyond Earth ever found, officials said Wednesday.
What's New:
NASA officials held a briefing on Wednesday highlighting a sample collected by the Perseverance Rover on Mars in 2024. Officials say the rock sample the rover collected is the clearest example of life beyond earth they’ve been able to find in 30 years.
In photographs NASA released, the rock is speckled and looks somewhat like leopard print. It was discovered in an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater and taken from a rock named "Cheyava Falls." It contains potential biosignatures which are indicators of life, according to sentients, who published their findings in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
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The rover’s science instruments found that the formation’s sedimentary rocks are composed of clay and silt, which, on Earth, are excellent preservers of past microbial life. They also are rich in organic carbon, sulfur, oxidized iron (rust), and phosphorous.
Scientists from across the world looked at the findings for about a year and couldn’t disprove the signs of life, which is why NASA is updating the public a year after the initial discovery.
Nothing can be fully confirmed, however, until the sample is returned and tested on earth.
What's next:
NASA is working to bring that sample plus about 30 others back to earth, but funding is a challenge. President Trump has proposed budget cuts to NASA that could hinder the return mission. There’s no timeline or specifics set for how the samples will be returned.
What they're saying:
NASA says the discovery should be praised and will be studied in much further detail moving forward.
"We can’t find another explanation, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we have ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting," said Sean Duffy, who’s the acting NASA Administrator.
"We really used every scientific instrument available to us on the payload to investigate these rocks and make as complete picture as we can of what these rocks are made of," Joel Hurowitz, who’s a planetary scientist at Stony Brook University and lead investigator on this sample discovery.
"This is the kind of signature that we would see made by something biological. In this case. It’s kind of like seeing left over fossils," said Nicky Fox who’s an associate administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
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The Source: This story was written based on information shared by NASA.