NASA has announced the discovery of microbial life on the Martian surface.
The new administrator for the space agency, Sean Duffy, said a sample collected by the Perseverance rover has been declared the ‘clearest sign of life’ on the Red Planet.
In a Wednesday news conference, NASA’s Associate Administrator Nick Fox said: ‘This is the kind of signature that we would see that was made by something biological.’
Specifically, researchers have been looking at unusual spots and seed-like shapes in ancient Martian rocks that might point to the existence of tiny life forms in the distant past.
These features, nicknamed ‘poppy seeds’ and ‘leopard spots,’ were spotted in mud-like rocks in Neretva Vallis, part of the Jezero Crater where a river existed billions of years ago.
The rover has been exploring this region since landing on Mars in 2021.
Scientist Joel Hurowitz revealed how these tiny signatures found in the crater pointed to the existence of life on Mars billions of years ago.
The rover’s tools detected chemicals like iron and phosphorus in these spots, which can form when tiny microbes break down organic material, a sign of life here on Earth.
NASA officials revealed new findings by the Perseverance rover, which has been exploring Mars (pictured) since 2021
In 2024, Perseverance spotted a vein-filled arrowhead-shaped rock that featured chemical signatures and structures formed by microbial life billions of years ago
The rover has been beaming back images to Earth for years, revealing crystalline solids left over from water flowing on the surface and a reddish area that contained organic compounds and an energy source for what could have been microbial life.
Perseverance collected the life-proving rocks on July 21, 2024 while exploring the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, the ancient river valley formed roughly 3.7 billion years ago.
Scientists noticed the vein-like structures throughout, finding they were white calcium sulfate.
The crystalline solids on the Martian surface are hard-water deposits left behind by ancient groundwater flowing through the now dusty landscape.
Between those veins were bands of material with a reddish color suggesting the presence of hematite, one of the minerals that gives Mars its distinctive rusty hue.
Duffy noted that the announcement Wednesday was the culmination of 30 years of research on the Red Planet.
He added that the latest findings went through a peer-review process that proved the samples likely had a biological origin.
NASA Administrator Sean Duffy revealed that a sample collected by Perseverance is the ‘clearest sign of life’ on Mars
Perseverance took a selfie in the Jezero Crater on Mars when it made the biological samples
