NASA’s Mars rover has sent new evidence of the existence of organic molecules on the red planet
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NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered new organic molecules in rocks on Mars near where the lake used to be. This was reported by Reuters with reference to research in Nature. The SHERLOC instrument took 10 samples at the bottom of the Lake crater. Scientists analyzed them and found organic molecules in 2 rock samples. At the same time, the researchers emphasized that evidence of the presence of such molecules is not proof of the existence of life on Mars in the past or now. Photo: NASA Perseverance “Organics are the molecular building blocks of life as we know it, but can also be formed by geological processes that are not directly related to life. We see numerous signals that appear to be changing in crater floor formations and in minerals with which they are associated,” said astrobiologist Sunanda Sharma of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The researchers don’t know the specific organic compounds that SHERLOC detected, but they do have some clues. Study co-author Ryan Roppel, a graduate student in chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, said the chemical signatures could come from compounds such as benzene or naphthalene. “On Earth, they are quite common in crude oil, which is of biotic origin, but we can also form them synthetically through various chemical reactions. The concentrations we found are generally low, but we observed signals associated with organics at almost every breed we took,” said Roppel. It will be recalled that signs of organic molecules were first discovered on Mars in 2015 by another rover named Curiosity. The Perseverance rover began examining rock and soil samples in Crater Lake in February 2021. At the site of the crater more than 3.5 billion years ago there was a lake. Scientists suggest that microbial life could have existed in it. It will be recalled that the Webb telescope recently discovered an important carbon molecule in space. Read also: Mars rover found a donut-like meteorite. PHOTO
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