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A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study has found more evidence that life could have once existed on the Red Planet, Motherboard reports.
The research team was one of three that analysed data from various instruments onboard the rover and published their findings in the journal Science last week.
Its focus was on the rover’s onboard ultraviolet spectrometer called Sherloc, short for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals.
The researchers discovered Sherloc had detected organic molecules consisting of carbon-hydrogen bonds in some of the rocks from the planet’s Jezero crater.
“They are not necessarily signs of life, but you want to see liquid water and organic compounds together in an environment because they’re the key components of what could make an environment habitable,” explained study lead Eva Scheller.
Nasa’s Mars rover Perseverance analysing rocks at Skinner Ridge in the Jezero CraterThe organic compounds could also be created through non-biological processes.
The only way to determine if they originated through biological means would be to return the samples to Earth.
Nasa and the European Space Agency plan to do just that in an ambitious mission slated for 2033.
It involves building the first spacecraft that can launch from Mars’s surface to an orbiter that will carry the samples back to Earth.
Scheller’s team also estimated that the area where Sherloc detected the organic compounds and other chemicals had water around 3.8 billion years ago.
About a billion years later, the crater had a saltier brine, producing “very strange” chemicals called perchlorates.
Perchlorates are not common on Earth, but appear to be more common on Mars, given that they have been detected on almost all Mars missions.
Now read: Nasa’s Orion capsule completes successful Moon flyby
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Nasa’s Perseverance Rover finds more signs that life might have existed on Mars
English (US)