Incredible discovery hints at life on Mars: 'Right conditions'
Water was not only present across much of the Martian surface, it existed for a long time.
Tiny crystals found just below the surface of Mars are helping scientists unravel the mystery of whether life once existed on its surface.
An Aussie-led research team used data collected by NASA's Perseverance rover to examine tiny sulphate mineral deposits. Because their presence is associated with water, they are able to form a picture of how it once flowed around the planet over a prolonged period.
'Instead of just having evidence that water was there, we now have evidence that water was there for a long time,' lead researcher Dr Michael Jones of the Queensland University of Technology told Yahoo News. 'When Mars had an atmosphere, all the right conditions [for life] were there.'
Life didn't take long to evolve on Earth once conditions were favourable, so it's plausible that microbial life was once present on Mars, and then became extinct after the atmosphere was destroyed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Previous missions to the red planet were focused on where water existed, but the current mission is focused on searching for biosignatures or 'fingerprints' associated with early life.
'We're looking for patterns that on Earth are created by biology. It's a lot harder to do on another planet,' Jones said.
What was Mars like when it was covered in water?
The data was gathered using a device developed at the Australian Synchrotron facility in Melbourne by a former student at QUT, Abigail Allwood. The PIXL instrument provided insights into how and when crystals grew and what it was like to be on Mars at that time.
'It would have been relatively wet. The water probably wouldn't have been what you would imagine a lake to be, it would have had a much higher salt content, almost like a Dead Sea,' Jones said.
ADVERTISEMENT
'We have evidence that the inflow was quite rapid and strong. There are some big boulders that are within this sedimentary fan… But there was no vegetation, and that would be the stark difference to Earth.'
The research was published in the journal Science Advances on Thursday. It highlights the team's pioneering use of a method called X-ray Backscatter Diffraction Mapping (XBDM) which produces a clearer 'fingerprint' of how and when the crystals grew.
Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump withdraws nominee to lead NASA Jared Isaacman, a close ally of Elon Musk
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump has pulled his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a billionaire commercial astronaut with close ties to Elon Musk, as his nominee to serve as administrator of NASA. The White House confirmed the withdrawal on May 31 and said Trump will soon announce a new nominee to lead NASA. No reason was provided for parting ways with Isaacman, who led and financed private astronaut missions Polaris Dawn and Inspiration4, which was carried out by Musk's SpaceX. The withdrawal, first reported by the news website Semafor, comes after the 42-year-old Isaacman already cleared the Senate Commerce Committee in April and appeared on track for a full Senate vote. 'The Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump's bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars," White House Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston said in a statement. "It's essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump's America First agenda, and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon." More: Elon Musk's rise and fall: From Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to a swift exit The move comes a day after Musk, a business partner and friend of Isaacman, left the White House after spending four months as a senior White House adviser overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk joined Trump for an Oval Office news conference to mark the end of the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO's tenure in the White House. "It is rare to find someone so competent and good-hearted," Musk said in a post on X, in reaction to Trump's decision to withdraw Isaacman's nomination. Conservative activist Laura Loomer, who has proven influential in many Trump decisions, raised alarm about the status of Isaacman's nomination in an X post, hours before the White House confirmed it was being withdrawn, writing, "There is reason to believe that Isaacman may be facing retaliation because of his friendship with Musk." More: Trump's pick to head NASA has been to space twice: Recapping billionaire's missions Isaacman, founder and CEO of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, undertook his first private space venture in 2021, when he was commander and financier of the world's first all-civilian extended mission to space. In 2024, he returned to space with an all-civilian crew of amateur spacefarers with the Polaris Dawn mission, which he jointly funded with SpaceX. Isaacman drew concern from some lawmakers over his ties to Musk and SpaceX. During his Senate confirmation hearing in April, he sought to balance NASA's existing moon-aligned space exploration strategy with the Trump administration's push for a space mission to Mars, saying the U.S. can plan for travel to both destinations. As a potential leader of NASA's some 18,000 employees, Isaacman faced a daunting task of implementing that decision to prioritize Mars, given that NASA has spent years and billions of dollars trying to return its astronauts to the moon. NASA, which has about 18,000 employees, has lacked a full-time administrator since Bill Nelson, NASA administrator in the Biden administration, stepped down on Jan. 20 when Trump was inaugurated. Contributing: Eric Lagatta of USA TODAY and Reuters Reach Joey Garrison @joeygarrison. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Trump withdraws nominee to lead NASA Jared Isaacman
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Dozens of NASA space missions could be axed under Trump's budget: Here's a look at 6
Dozens of NASA's missions to explore the cosmos could be in jeopardy under a budget proposal from the White House. President Donald Trump's administration, which released an initial budget proposal May 2 for the U.S. space agency, dropped more details Friday, May 30 about just which NASA programs it looks to cancel. All told, the budget request for the next fiscal year proposes slashing NASA funding by nearly 25% – from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion – mostly by eliminating a significant portion of the agency's science portfolio. Trump's proposal, which would need congressional approval, has been lauded by acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro for "still prioritizing critical science and technology research," she said in a statement. But in its own statement, the Planetary Society called the proposed budget "an extinction-level event for the space agency's most productive, successful, and broadly supported activity: science." A total of 41 science projects would get the ax under the proposal, which would be NASA's biggest single-year cut in the agency's history, according to the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy organization. Many of the science missions Trump looks to cancel are still in development, while others are extended operations with uncrewed vehicles already deployed to orbit. Here's a look at six different types of space missions, from Mars exploration to future moon landings, that could be under threat if Trump's budget were to go into effect. For years, NASA's Mars Sample Return mission has sought to bring back a collection of rocks that could reveal details about potential past life on the Red Planet. The agency's Perseverance rover has been scooping up and storing intriguing rock samples since it first landed in 2021 in the Jezero Crater. But ballooning costs and mission delays have hampered both NASA and the European Space Agency in executing a plan to actually retrieve and transport the samples to Earth for scientists to study further. Meanwhile, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN are two spacecrafts that have been orbiting Mars for years. While those missions could be eliminated, Trump looks to inject another $1 billion to tap the private sector to help lay the groundwork for future Mars exploration. That includes establishing a new NASA initiative called the Commercial Mars Payload Services Program (CMPS). The program would operate similar to NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program by awarding contracts to private companies that would develop spacesuits, vehicles and other technology aimed at reaching the Red Planet. The New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close when it flew by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015. In 2019, the space probe reached the Kuiper belt – a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending far beyond the orbit of Neptune – where it continues to make discoveries about the outer solar system. The Juno probe, meanwhile, continues to reveal new insights into the gas giant Jupiter and its Jovian moons nine years after arriving in 2016. The spacecraft recently relayed data unmasking the harsh environments of both Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io. NASA's Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule – both seen as centerpieces in the effort to return Americans to the moon – may have their days numbered. The SLS and Orion, which have both launched just once on an uncrewed mission in 2022 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, are due to play a role in NASA's lunar ambitions under the Artemis campaign. But Trump seeks to phase out both the SLS and the Orion after just two more missions. That means Artemis II astronauts would still ride an Orion capsule around the moon following liftoff using the SLS rocket as early as 2026. NASA's plans also call for Artemis III astronauts aboard the Orion capsule to board a SpaceX Starship while in orbit for a ride to the moon's surface as early as 2027. Four years ago, NASA selected two missions to Venus under its Discovery program, focused on developing spaceflights to study our solar system. DAVINCI is a planned mission managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for an orbiter and atmospheric descent probe to reach Venus. Its counterpart, VERITAS, is another upcoming mission to map the surface of the planet in high resolution that would be managed from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Both spacecraft would have been the first NASA vehicles to explore Venus since the 1990s. NASA's OSIRIS-REx, which gathered and returned a sample of asteroid Bennu in September 2023, had been renamed OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer (OSIRIS-APEX) and sent on a path that would allow it to meet up with an infamous asteroid in 2029. That asteroid is name Apophis, and it initially posed a sizable threat to Earth when it was first discovered in 2004 before scientists eventually calculated that its trajectory was harmless. OSIRIS-APEX was meant to spend 18 months mapping the asteroid's surface and analyzing its chemical makeup during a rendezvous with Apophis in June 2029 after the asteroid has a close encounter with Earth. Scientists had considered the mission an invaluable endeavor to allow NASA and other space agency's to build up planetary defense capabilities if a space rock ever posed a threat. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has spent more than 25 years detecting exotic environments in the cosmos to help astronomers understand the structure and evolution of the universe. The space telescope, which launched in 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, continues to provide data allowing scientists to make new cosmic discoveries. While the observatory is targeted under Trump's budget proposal, other famous space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope would remain in operation. Contributing: Brooke Edwards, Rick Neale, USA TODAY Network Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump's budget targets dozens of NASA space missions: Here's a look
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
SpaceX's next private astronaut launch to ISS, Ax-4, delayed to June 8
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. We'll have a wait a bit longer to see the next private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS) lift off. NASA announced on Wednesday (May 14) that the target launch date for Ax-4, the fourth crewed flight to the ISS by Houston-based company Axiom Space, has been pushed from May 29 to June 8. The delay is part of a series of ISS schedule adjustments, which will "provide more time to finalize mission plans, spacecraft readiness and logistics," agency officials wrote in an update on Wednesday. Ax-4 will lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying four people to the orbiting lab aboard a Dragon spacecraft. That quartet will be led by record-setting former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who currently serves as Axiom's director of human spaceflight. Joining her are pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India, Polish mission specialist Sławosz Uznański of the European Space Agency and mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary. Ax-4 will mark the first time that anyone from those latter three countries lives aboard the ISS. The spaceflyers will conduct nearly 60 science investigations during the mission, which is expected to remain docked at the orbiting lab for about two weeks. Related stories: — SpaceX Dragon carrying Ax-3 astronauts splashes down in Atlantic to end longest private spaceflight for Axiom Space — Axiom Space: Building the off-Earth economy — Axiom Space eyes the moon while continuing to dream big in Earth orbit Two other ISS missions, both of them SpaceX flights, are affected by the newly announced rescheduling. SpaceX's Crew-11 astronaut mission for NASA is now slated to launch no earlier than late July (rather than simply "July"), and the company's CRS-33 cargo flight is targeting a late August liftoff.
