Mars rovers make seperate finds pointing to past life: What Perseverance, Curiosity found
Two NASA rovers on Mars recently made two independent discoveries further indicating that ancient life may have once existed on the Red Planet.
The U.S. space agency's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, both about the size of a car, have spent years scouring different regions of Mars to find evidence that the now-barren planet may once have been habitable. Scientists believe the geology of Mars may hold valuable clues about past ancient life, and so the robotic vehicles, controlled remotely from Earth, have slowly navigated the rocky terrain to scoop up and collect intriguing samples.
The latest finds both came last month.
Perseverance, which is still early into its journey exploring the top of the crater where it landed four years ago, came across a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres. NASA scientists are now working hard to understand their origin.
As for Curiosity, which is exploring a region about 2,300 miles away, the rover recently discovered the largest organic molecules on Mars to date.
Here's more on each rover's find, as well as what's next for the Mars missions and NASA's plans to get the samples back to Earth.
Mars: A rover has been collecting rocks from Mars for years. How will they get back to Earth?
The Perseverance recently spotted a rock with a strange texture as it rolled along the rim of the Jezero Crater north of the Martian equator.
The rock, named 'St. Pauls Bay' by the Perseverance mission team, appeared to be comprised of hundreds of tiny, dark-gray spheres. Some of these appeared in more elongated shapes, while others had more angular edges and a few even had tiny pinholes.
The finding was first made March 11, with NASA releasing a composite image 10 days later that the rover captured with its SuperCam Remote Micro Imager.
Martian rovers have previously spotted strange spheres before, including Curiosity and the now-defunct Opportunity. Just a few months ago, Perseverance itself even spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks in the Jezero crater.
In those cases, scientists determined the spheres were likely formed from interactions with groundwater circulating through the rocks' pores.
What makes St. Pauls Bay different, however, was that it was determined to be out of place. Initial observations have allowed scientists to conclude that it could be tied to a dark-toned rocky layer that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted from above.
"Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin, and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and beyond," NASA said in a news release.
The Curiosity rover recently took a fresh look at a previously-collected sample that its mission team named "Cumberland" to make a new discovery. By remotely analyzing the pulverized rock within the rover's belly, scientists found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date.
The finding, published March 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life, NASA said in a news release.
Fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by certain geological processes. Regardless of the origin, the find is still a thrilling one Curiosity's team.
"Curiosity scientists had previously discovered small, simple organic molecules on Mars, but finding these larger compounds provides the first evidence that organic chemistry advanced toward the kind of complexity required for an origin of life on Mars," NASA said in a statement.
In July 2020, the Perseverance rover underwent a 200-day, 300-million-mile journey to reach Mars. After landing in February 2021 in the Jezero Crater, the robot, controlled remotely from Earth, spent nearly four years searching for and collecting more than two dozen rock samples – many of which are stored at the first-ever depot on another planet for future retrieval.
The bottom of the Jezero Crater – believed to have formed 3.9 billion years ago from a massive impact – is considered to be among the most promising areas on Mars to search for evidence of ancient life. But after years in the trenches of Jezero, Perseverance in December finally summitted the steep Martian crater to begin the next leg of its journey exploring the crater's rim.
Curiosity, meanwhile, has been on the planet much longer. The rover landed in August 2012 in an area known as the Gale Crater, believed to have formed 3.7 billion years ago, and has since collected 42 powderized rock samples with the drill on the end of its robotic arm.
The Cumberland sample was drilled in May 2013 from a shallow depression in the Gale Crater called 'Yellowknife Bay.' Scientists were so intrigued by Yellowknife Bay, which looked like an ancient lakebed, they sent the rover there before heading in the opposite direction to its primary destination of Mount Sharp, which rises from the floor of the crater.
The detour turned out to be worth it, as NASA says the rock was found to be rich with clues about the Gale Crater's geological history. Cumberland is filled with clay minerals, which form in water, as well as organic molecule-preserving sulfur and other molecules crucial to biological proccesses, according to NASA.
While both Perseverance and Curiosity's adventures have revealed some insights about the enigmatic Martian geology, that's nothing compared to what studying the samples up close with state-of-the-art equipment could unveil. NASA has been working on plans to bring samples from Mars to Earth in the coming years to analyze them further.
'We are ready to take the next big step and bring Mars samples home to our labs to settle the debate about life on Mars,' said Daniel Glavin, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mars rovers make seperate finds: Did the Red planet host life?
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