NASA's rock samples from Mars reveal groundbreaking evidence of potential life and water on the Red Planet.
According to Astro Biology, NASA’s Perseverance rover over the course of around five months in 2022 collected rock samples from river deposits in a dried-up lake that once filled a crater called Jezero on Mars.
As per research reports published in the AGU Advances, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, these samples could potentially rewrite the history of life and water on Mars.
David Shuster, co-author of the paper and a member of NASA’s science team for sample collection, said, “These samples are the reason why our mission was flown. This is exactly what everyone was hoping to accomplish. And we’ve accomplished it. These are what we went looking for.”
The researcher further added, “These are the first and only sedimentary rocks that have been studied and collected from a planet other than Earth.”
Moreover, Shuster explained. “Sedimentary rocks are important because they were transported by water, deposited into a standing body of water, and subsequently modified by chemistry that involved liquid water on the surface of Mars at some point in the past.”
He continued, “The whole reason that we came to Jezero was to study this sort of rock type. These are absolutely fantastic samples for the overarching objectives of the mission.”
Additionally, it is believed that this evidence is not enough to draw any conclusion, and researchers need more detailed analysis on new samples.
Scientists are hopeful to have some new samples from Mars on Earth by 2033.
